A Framework for Developing Diagram Applications

This chapter presents a framework for developing diagram applications. The diagrams refer to those graphs where nodes vary in shape and size used in real world applications, such as flowcharts, UML diagrams, and E-R diagrams. The framework is based on a model the authors developed for diagrams. The model is robust for diagrams and it can represent a wide variety of applications and support the development of powerful application-specific functions. The framework based on this model supports the development of automatic layout techniques for diagrams and the development of the linkage between the graph structure and applications. Automatic layout for diagrams is demonstrated and two case studies for diagram applications are presented.