NAME¶
dot - filter for drawing directed graphs
neato - filter for drawing undirected graphs
twopi - filter for radial layouts of graphs
circo - filter for circular layout of graphs
fdp - filter for drawing undirected graphs
sfdp - filter for drawing large undirected graphs
SYNOPSIS¶
dot [
-(
G|
N|
E)
name=value] [
-Tlang] [
-llibfile] [
-ooutfile] [
-Klayout] [
-O] [
-P] [
-v] [
-V]
[files]
neato [
-(
G|
N|
E)
name=value] [
-T lang] [
-llibfile] [
-n[
1|
2]] [
-ooutfile] [
-Klayout] [
-O] [
-P] [
-v] [
-V]
[files]
twopi [
-(
G|
N|
E)
name=value] [
-T lang] [
-llibfile] [
-ooutfile] [
-Klayout] [
-O] [
-P] [
-v] [
-V]
[files]
circo [
-(
G|
N|
E)
name=value] [
-T lang] [
-llibfile] [
-ooutfile] [
-Klayout] [
-O] [
-P] [
-v] [
-V]
[files]
fdp [
-(
G|
N|
E)
name=value] [
-Tlang] [
-llibfile] [
-ooutfile] [
-Klayout] [
-O] [
-P] [
-v] [
-V]
[files]
sfdp [
-(
G|
N|
E)
name=value] [
-Tlang] [
-llibfile] [
-ooutfile] [
-Klayout] [
-O] [
-P] [
-v] [
-V]
[files]
DESCRIPTION¶
dot draws directed graphs. It works well on DAGs and other graphs that
can be drawn as hierarchies. It reads attributed graph files and writes
drawings. By default, the output format
dot is the input file with
layout coordinates appended.
neato draws undirected graphs using ``spring'' models (see Kamada and
Kawai, Information Processing Letters 31:1, April 1989). Input files must be
formatted in the
dot attributed graph language. By default, the output
of
neato is the input graph with layout coordinates appended.
twopi draws graphs using a radial layout (see G. Wills, Symposium on
Graph Drawing GD'97, September, 1997). Basically, one node is chosen as the
center and put at the origin. The remaining nodes are placed on a sequence of
concentric circles centered about the origin, each a fixed radial distance
from the previous circle. All nodes distance 1 from the center are placed on
the first circle; all nodes distance 1 from a node on the first circle are
placed on the second circle; and so forth.
circo draws graphs using a circular layout (see Six and Tollis, GD '99
and ALENEX '99, and Kaufmann and Wiese, GD '02.) The tool identifies
biconnected components and draws the nodes of the component on a circle. The
block‐cutpoint tree is then laid out using a recursive radial algorithm.
Edge crossings within a circle are minimized by placing as many edges on the
circle's perimeter as possible. In particular, if the component is
outerplanar, the component will have a planar layout.
If a node belongs to multiple non‐trivial biconnected components, the
layout puts the node in one of them. By default, this is the first
non‐trivial component found in the search from the root component.
fdp draws undirected graphs using a ``spring'' model. It relies on a
force‐directed approach in the spirit of Fruchterman and Reingold (cf.
Software‐Practice & Experience 21(11), 1991, pp. 1129‐1164).
sfdp also draws undirected graphs using the ``spring'' model described
above, but it uses a multi-scale approach to produce layouts of large graphs
in a reasonably short time.
Dot uses an extensible plugin mechanism for its output renderers, so to see what
output formats your installation of dot supports you can use ``dot -Txxx''
(where xxx is an unlikely format) and check the warning message. Also, The
plugin mechanism supports multiple implementations of the output formats. To
see what variants are available, use, for example: ``dot -Tpng:'' and to force
a particular variant, use, for example: ``dot -Tpng:gd''
Traditionally, dot supports the following:
-Tps (PostScript),
-Tsvg -Tsvgz (Structured Vector Graphics),
-Tfig (XFIG
graphics),
-Tmif (FrameMaker graphics),
-Thpgl (HP pen
plotters), and
-Tpcl (Laserjet printers),
-Tpng -Tgif
(bitmap graphics),
-Tdia (GTK+ based diagrams),
-Timap (imagemap
files for httpd servers for each node or edge that has a non‐null
"href" attribute.),
-Tcmapx (client‐side imagemap for
use in html and xhtml). Additional less common or more special‐purpose
output formats can be found at
http://www.graphviz.org/cvs/doc/info/output.html.)
Alternative plugins providing support for a given output format can be found
from the error message resulting from appending a ':' to the format. e.g.
-Tpng: The first plugin listed is always the default.
The
-P switch can be used to produce a graph of all output variants
supported by plugins in the local installation of graphviz.
GRAPH FILE LANGUAGE¶
Here is a synopsis of the graph file language, traditionally using the extension
.dot, for graphs:
[
strict] (
graph|
digraph)
name {
statement‐list }
Is the top level graph. If the graph is
strict then multiple edges are
not allowed between the same pairs of nodes. If it is a directed graph,
indicated by
digraph, then the
edgeop must be "->".
If it is an undirected
graph then the
edgeop must be
"--". Statements may be:
name=val;
node [name=val];
edge [name=val];
Set default graph, node, or edge attribute
name to
val. Any
subgraph, node, or edge appearing after this inherits the new default
attributes.
n0 [name0=val0,name1=val1,...];
Creates node
n0 (if it does not already exist) and sets its attributes
according to the optional list.
n0 edgeop n1
edgeop ... edgeop nn
[ name0=val0,name1=val1,...];
Creates edges between nodes
n0,
n1, ...,
nn and sets their
attributes according to the optional list. Creates nodes as necessary.
[
subgraph name]
{ statement‐list }
Creates a subgraph. Subgraphs may be used in place of
n0, ...,
nn
in the above statements to create edges. [
subgraph name] is
optional; if missing, the subgraph is assigned an internal name.
Comments may be /*C‐like*/ or //C++‐like.
Attribute names and values are ordinary (C‐style) strings. The following
sections describe attributes that control graph layout.
GRAPH ATTRIBUTES¶
size="x,y" sets bounding box of drawing in
inches.
page="x,y" sets the PostScript pagination unit.
ratio=f sets the aspect ratio to
f which may be a floating
point number, or one of the keywords
fill,
compress, or
auto.
layout=engine indicates the preferred layout engine
("dot", "neato", fdp" etc) overriding the default
from the basename of the command or the -K commandline option.
margin=f sets the page margin (included in the page size).
nodesep=f sets the minimum separation between nodes.
ranksep=f sets the minimum separation between ranks.
ordering=out constrains order of out‐edges in a subgraph according
to their file sequence.
rankdir=LR|RL|BT requests a left‐to‐right,
right‐to‐left, or bottom‐to‐top, drawing.
pagedir=[TBLR][TBLR] sets the major and minor order of pagination.
rank=same (or
min or
max) in a subgraph constrains the rank
assignment of its nodes. If a subgraph's name has the prefix
cluster,
its nodes are drawn in a distinct rectangle of the layout. Clusters may be
nested.
rotate=90 sets landscape mode. (
orientation=land is backward
compatible but obsolete.)
center=n a non‐zero value centers the drawing on the page.
nslimit=f or
mclimit=f adjusts the bound on the
number of network simplex or mincross iterations by the given ratio. For
example,
mclimit=2.0 runs twice as long.
layers="id:id:id:id" is a sequence of layer identifiers
for overlay diagrams. The PostScript array variable
layercolorseq sets
the assignment of colors to layers. The least index is 1 and each element must
be a 3‐element array to be interpreted as a color coordinate.
color=colorvalue sets foreground color (
bgcolor for
background).
href="url" the default url for image map files; in
PostScript files, the base URL for all relative URLs, as recognized by Acrobat
Distiller 3.0 and up.
URL="url" ("URL" is a synonym for
"href".)
stylesheet="file.css" includes a reference to a
stylesheet in -Tsvg and -Tsvgz outputs. Ignored by other formats.
splines. If set to
true, edges are drawn as splines. If set to
polyline, edges are drawn as polylines. If set to
ortho, edges
are drawn as orthogonal polylines. In all of these cases, the nodes may not
overlap. If
splines=false or
splines=line, edges
are drawn as line segments. The default is
true for dot, and
false for all other layouts.
(neato‐specific attributes)
start=val. Requests random initial placement and seeds the random
number generator. If
val is not an integer, the process ID or current
time is used as the seed.
epsilon=n. Sets the cutoff for the solver. The default is 0.1.
(twopi‐specific attributes)
root=ctr. This specifies the node to be used as the center of the
layout. If not specified,
twopi will randomly pick one of the nodes
that are furthest from a leaf node, where a leaf node is a node of degree 1.
If no leaf nodes exists, an arbitrary node is picked as center.
ranksep=val. Specifies the radial distance in inches between the
sequence of rings. The default is 0.75.
overlap=mode. This specifies what
twopi should do if any
nodes overlap. If mode is
"false", the program uses Voronoi
diagrams to adjust the nodes to eliminate overlaps. If mode is
"scale", the layout is uniformly scaled up, preserving node
sizes, until nodes no longer overlap. The latter technique removes overlaps
while preserving symmetry and structure, while the former removes overlaps
more compactly but destroys symmetries. If mode is
"true"
(the default), no repositioning is done.
(circo‐specific attributes)
root=nodename. Specifies the name of a node occurring in the root
block. If the graph is disconnected, the
root node attribute can be
used to specify additional root blocks.
mindist=value. Sets the minimum separation between all nodes. If
not specified then
circo uses a default value of 1.0.
(fdp‐specific attributes)
K=val. Sets the default ideal node separation in the layout.
maxiter=val. Sets the maximum number of iterations used to layout
the graph.
start=val. Adjusts the random initial placement of nodes with no
specified position. If
val is is an integer, it is used as the seed for
the random number generator. If
val is not an integer, a random
system‐generated integer, such as the process ID or current time, is
used as the seed.
NODE ATTRIBUTES¶
height=d or
width=d sets minimum height or width.
Adding
fixedsize=true forces these to be the actual size (text labels
are ignored).
shape=record polygon epsf builtin_polygon
builtin_polygon is one of:
plaintext ellipse oval circle egg
triangle box diamond trapezium parallelogram house hexagon octagon
note tab box3d component. (Polygons are defined or modified by the
following node attributes:
regular,
peripheries,
sides,
orientation,
distortion and
skew.)
epsf uses the
node's
shapefile attribute as the path name of an external EPSF file to
be automatically loaded for the node shape.
label=text where
text may include escaped newlines \n, \l,
or \r for center, left, and right justified lines. The string '\N' value will
be replaced by the node name. The string '\G' value will be replaced by the
graph name. Record labels may contain recursive box lists delimited by { | }.
Port identifiers in labels are set off by angle brackets < >. In the
graph file, use colon (such as,
node0:port28).
fontsize=n sets the label type size to
n points.
fontname=name sets the label font family name.
color=colorvalue sets the outline color, and the default fill
color if style=filled and
fillcolor is not specified.
fillcolor=colorvalue sets the fill color when style=filled. If not
specified, the fillcolor when style=filled defaults to be the same as the
outline color.
fontcolor=colorvalue sets the label text color.
A
colorvalue may be "
h,s,v" (hue, saturation,
brightness) floating point numbers between 0 and 1, or an X11 color name such
as
white black red green blue yellow magenta cyan or
burlywood,
or a "
#rrggbb" (red, green, blue, 2 hex characters each)
value.
style=filled solid dashed dotted bold invis or any Postscript code.
layer=id or
id:id or "all" sets the node's active
layers. The empty string means no layers (invisible).
The following attributes apply only to polygon shape nodes:
regular=n if
n is non‐zero then the polygon is made
regular, i.e. symmetric about the x and y axis, otherwise the polygon takes on
the aspect ratio of the label.
builtin_polygons that are not already
regular are made regular by this attribute.
builtin_polygons that are
already regular are not affected (i.e. they cannot be made asymmetric).
peripheries=n sets the number of periphery lines drawn around the
polygon. This value supersedes the number of periphery lines of
builtin_polygons.
sides=n sets the number of sides to the polygon.
n<3
results in an ellipse. This attribute is ignored by
builtin_polygons.
orientation=f sets the orientation of the first apex of the
polygon counterclockwise from the vertical, in degrees.
f may be a
floating point number. The orientation of labels is not affected by this
attribute. This attribute is added to the initial orientation of
builtin_polygons.
distortion=f sets the amount of broadening of the top and
narrowing of the bottom of the polygon (relative to its orientation). Floating
point values between -1 and +1 are suggested. This attribute is ignored by
builtin_polygons.
skew=f sets the amount of right‐displacement of the top and
left‐displacement of the bottom of the polygon (relative to its
orientation). Floating point values between -1 and +1 are suggested. This
attribute is ignored by
builtin_polygons.
href="url" sets the url for the node in imagemap,
PostScript and SVG files. The substrings '\N' and '\G' are substituted in the
same manner as for the node label attribute. Additionally the substring '\L'
is substituted with the node label string.
URL="url" ("URL" is a synonym for
"href".)
target="target" is a target string for client‐side
imagemaps and SVG, effective when nodes have a URL. The target string is used
to determine which window of the browser is used for the URL. Setting it to
"_graphviz" will open a new window if it doesn't already exist, or
reuse it if it does. If the target string is empty, the default, then no
target attribute is included in the output. The substrings '\N' and '\G' are
substituted in the same manner as for the node label attribute. Additionally
the substring '\L' is substituted with the node label string.
tooltip="tooltip" is a tooltip string for
client‐side imagemaps and SVG, effective when nodes have a URL. The
tooltip string defaults to be the same as the label string, but this attribute
permits nodes without labels to still have tooltips thus permitting denser
graphs. The substrings '\N' and '\G' are substituted in the same manner as for
the node label attribute. Additionally the substring '\L' is substituted with
the node label string.
(circo‐specific attributes)
root=true/false. This specifies that the block containing the
given node be treated as the root of the spanning tree in the layout.
(fdp‐specific attributes)
pin=val. If
val is "true", the node will remain
at its initial position.
EDGE ATTRIBUTES¶
minlen=n where
n is an integer factor that applies to the
edge length (ranks for normal edges, or minimum node separation for flat
edges).
weight=n where
n is the integer cost of the edge. Values
greater than 1 tend to shorten the edge. Weight 0 flat edges are ignored for
ordering nodes.
label=text where
text may include escaped newlines \n, \l,
or \r for centered, left, or right justified lines. If the substring '\T' is
found in a label it will be replaced by the tail_node name. If the substring
'\H' is found in a label it will be replaced by the head_node name. If the
substring '\E' value is found in a label it will be replaced by:
tail_node_name->head_node_name If the substring '\G' is found in a label it
will be replaced by the graph name. or by: tail_node_name--head_node_name for
undirected graphs.
fontsize=n sets the label type size to
n points.
fontname=name sets the label font family name.
fontcolor=colorvalue sets the label text color.
style=solid dashed dotted bold invis
color=colorvalue sets the line color for edges.
color=colorvaluelist a ':' separated list of
colorvalue
creates parallel edges, one edge for each color.
dir=forward back both none controls arrow direction.
tailclip,headclip=false disables endpoint shape clipping.
href="url" sets the url for the node in imagemap,
PostScript and SVG files. The substrings '\T', '\H', '\E' and '\G' are
substituted in the same manner as for the edge label attribute. Additionally
the substring '\L' is substituted with the edge label string.
URL="url" ("URL" is a synonym for
"href".)
target="target" is a target string for client‐side
imagemaps and SVG, effective when edges have a URL. If the target string is
empty, the default, then no target attribute is included in the output. The
substrings '\T', '\H', '\E' and '\G' are substituted in the same manner as for
the edge label attribute. Additionally the substring '\L' is substituted with
the edge label string.
tooltip="tooltip" is a tooltip string for
client‐side imagemaps effective when edges have a URL. The tooltip
string defaults to be the same as the edge label string. The substrings '\T',
'\H', '\E' and '\G' are substituted in the same manner as for the edge label
attribute. Additionally the substring '\L' is substituted with the edge label
string.
arrowhead,arrowtail=none, normal, inv, dot, odot, invdot, invodot,
tee, empty, invempty, open, halfopen, diamond, odiamond, box, obox,
crow.
arrowsize (norm_length=10,norm_width=5,
inv_length=6,inv_width=7,dot_radius=2)
headlabel,taillabel=string for port labels.
labelfontcolor,
labelfontname,
labelfontsize for head and
tail labels. The substrings '\T', '\H', '\E' and '\G' are substituted in the
same manner as for the edge label attribute. Additionally the substring '\L'
is substituted with the edge label string.
headhref="url" sets the url for the head port in
imagemap, PostScript and SVG files. The substrings '\T', '\H', '\E' and '\G'
are substituted in the same manner as for the edge label attribute.
Additionally the substring '\L' is substituted with the edge label string.
headURL="url" ("headURL" is a synonym for
"headhref".)
headtarget="headtarget" is a target string for
client‐side imagemaps and SVG, effective when edge heads have a URL. The
headtarget string is used to determine which window of the browser is used for
the URL. If the headtarget string is empty, the default, then headtarget
defaults to the same value as target for the edge. The substrings '\T', '\H',
'\E' and '\G' are substituted in the same manner as for the edge label
attribute. Additionally the substring '\L' is substituted with the edge label
string.
headtooltip="tooltip" is a tooltip string for
client‐side imagemaps effective when head ports have a URL. The tooltip
string defaults to be the same as the headlabel string. The substrings '\T',
'\H', and '\E' are substituted in the same manner as for the edge label
attribute. Additionally the substring '\L' is substituted with the edge label
string.
tailhref="url" sets the url for the tail port in
imagemap, PostScript and SVG files. The substrings '\T', '\H', '\E' and '\G'
are substituted in the same manner as for the edge label attribute.
Additionally the substring '\L' is substituted with the edge label string.
tailURL="url" ("tailURL" is a synonym for
"tailhref".)
tailtarget="tailtarget" is a target string for
client‐side imagemaps and SVG, effective when edge tails have a URL. The
tailtarget string is used to determine which window of the browser is used for
the URL. If the tailtarget string is empty, the default, then tailtarget
defaults to the same value as target for the edge. The substrings '\T', '\H',
'\E' and '\G' are substituted in the same manner as for the edge label
attribute. Additionally the substring '\L' is substituted with the edge label
string.
tailtooltip="tooltip" is a tooltip string for
client‐side imagemaps effective when tail ports have a URL. The tooltip
string defaults to be the same as the taillabel string. The substrings '\T',
'\H', '\E' and '\G' are substituted in the same manner as for the edge label
attribute. Additionally the substring '\L' is substituted with the edge label
string.
labeldistance and
port_label_distance set distance; also
labelangle (in degrees CCW)
decorate draws line from edge to label.
samehead,sametail aim edges having the same value to the same port, using
the average landing point.
constraint=false causes an edge to be ignored for rank assignment.
layer=id or
id:id or "all" sets the edge's active
layers. The empty string means no layers (invisible).
(neato‐specific attributes)
w=f sets the weight (spring constant) of an edge to the given
floating point value. The default is 1.0; greater values make the edge tend
more toward its optimal length.
len=f sets the optimal length of an edge. The default is 1.0.
(fdp‐specific attributes)
weight=f sets the weight of an edge to the given floating point
value. The default is 1.0; greater values make the edge tend more toward its
optimal length.
COMMAND LINE OPTIONS¶
-G sets a default graph attribute.
-N sets a default node attribute.
-E sets a default edge attribute. Example:
-Gsize="7,8"
-Nshape=box -Efontsize=8
-lfile loads custom PostScript library files. Usually these define
custom shapes or styles. If
-l is given by itself, the standard library
is omitted.
-Tlang sets the output language as described above.
-n[
1|
2] (no‐op) If set, neato assumes nodes have
already been positioned and all nodes have a pos attribute giving the
positions. It then performs an optional adjustment to remove node‐node
overlap, depending on the value of the overlap attribute, computes the edge
layouts, depending on the value of the
splines attribute, and emits the
graph in the appropriate format. If num is supplied, the following actions
occur:
num = 1
Equivalent to -n.
num > 1
Use node positions as specified, with no adjustment to remove node‐node
overlaps, and use any edge layouts already specified by the pos attribute.
neato computes an edge layout for any edge that does not have a pos attribute.
As usual, edge layout is guided by the
splines attribute.
-Klayout override the default layout engine implied by the command
name.
-O automatically generate output filenames based on the input filename
and the -T format.
-P generate a graph of the currently available plugins.
-v (verbose) prints various information useful for debugging.
-V (version) prints version information and exits.
-? prints the usage and exits.
EXAMPLES¶
digraph test123 {
a -> b -> c;
a -> {x y};
b [shape=box];
c [label="hello\nworld",color=blue,fontsize=24,
fontname="Palatino-Italic",fontcolor=red,style=filled];
a -> z [label="hi", weight=100];
x -> z [label="multi-line\nlabel"];
edge [style=dashed,color=red];
b -> x;
{rank=same; b x}
}
graph test123 {
a -- b -- c;
a -- {x y};
x -- c [w=10.0];
x -- y [w=5.0,len=3];
}
CAVEATS¶
Edge splines can overlap unintentionally.
Flat edge labels are slightly broken. Intercluster edge labels are totally
broken.
Because unconstrained optimization is employed, node boxes can possibly overlap
or touch unrelated edges. All existing spring embedders seem to have this
limitation.
Apparently reasonable attempts to pin nodes or adjust edge lengths and weights
can cause instability.
AUTHORS¶
Stephen C. North <north@research.att.com>
Emden R. Gansner <erg@research.att.com>
John C. Ellson <ellson@research.att.com>
The bitmap driver (PNG, GIF etc) is by Thomas Boutell,
<
http://www.boutell.com/gd>
The Truetype font renderer is from the Freetype Project (David Turner, Robert
Wilhelm, and Werner Lemberg) (who can be contacted at
freetype-devel@lists.lrz-muenchen.de).
SEE ALSO¶
This man page contains only a small amount of the information related to the
Graphviz layout programs. The most complete information can be found at
http://www.graphviz.org/Documentation.php, especially in the on‐line
reference pages. Most of these documents are also available in the
doc
and
doc/info subtrees in the source and binary distributions.
dotty(1),
tcldot(n),
xcolors(1),
libgraph(3).
E. R. Gansner, S. C. North, K. P. Vo, "DAG ‐ A Program to Draw
Directed Graphs", Software ‐ Practice and Experience 17(1), 1988,
pp. 1047‐1062.
E. R. Gansner, E. Koutsofios, S. C. North, K. P. Vo, "A Technique for
Drawing Directed Graphs," IEEE Trans. on Soft. Eng. 19(3), 1993, pp.
214‐230.
S. North and E. Koutsofios, "Applications of graph visualization",
Graphics Interface 94, pp. 234‐245.
E. Koutsofios and S. C. North, "Drawing Graphs with dot," Available on
research.att.com in dist/drawdag/dotguide.ps.Z.
S. C. North, "NEATO User's Manual". Available on research.att.com in
dist/drawdag/neatodoc.ps.Z.