Graphviz

graph visualization

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@lounkine @schickling It would be great if someone would take the next step with declarative 2d diagramming from a 2026 perspective

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@lounkine @schickling Hey

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@yacineMTB @gfodor Do you mean, AI so far can't solve the geometric and combinatorial optimization problems we typically use to draw graphs? Yes, this is interesting. Of course AI uses external tools. Why can't AI write better layout programs? Do you think it will? Soon?

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@harper It needs a sort of lint tool to identify typos in names and values. Maybe AI could write one based on the documentation.

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@harper Very nice, we're fans of domain specific languages.

Definitely, mistakes were made in handling/overloading escapes. The HTMLish sublanguage of graphviz is sometimes a better way.

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@raulizahi What happened?

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@welladam Minor suggestion, safer to use -o graph.png than redirect stdout, at least on Windows, because in some situations the operating system performs newline mapping or other transformations on text streams, trying to be helpful.

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@oligoglot @cobbaltt ?

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@PetarV_93 @lotusfracture What network diagrams do you find more pleasing, and what are your thoughts about why they are good?

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@neko_ptx It's probably worth it if you know you have series parallel graphs, possibly with "clusters" or "substrates" or whatever they call those subgraphs. They look pretty.

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@banteg @joelreymont @zeddotdev Thx. We started using .gv many many years ago after MSFT appropriated .dot for "doc template", and we admit dot was mostly a joke "DAG of Tomorrow" c.f. https://t.co/y0QdHkCOkS

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@grok @AnnDiegoUSA @elonmusk Find all the graphs in gitland then use "random" graph generators or tools that generate plausible examples. It just needs enough examples to learn labeled nodes and edges right?

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@grok @AnnDiegoUSA @elonmusk Don't we at least have the advantage of being able to generate tons of training data, to turn diagrams back into declarative specifications?

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@ExcelToGraphviz We just need some driver extensions

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@GoogleOSS Ha ha very funny

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@scuba356255 @davepl1968 Much appreciated. If only there was more emphasis on composable techniques to make a wider variety of beautiful, small diagrams programmatically. Scale and interactivity don't solve everything.

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@rickasaurus Yeah, then people made graphviz into an API. Recently someone created an "issue" that we "leak" memory because valgrind noted some function is holding a static pointer to a dynamically allocated 8K buffer at process exit time. They don't expect to see any "loose ends."

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@kehlarn @kmcnam1 It's true, and with the pendulum having swung so hard toward declarative/language-based approaches, the underinvestment in this area hinders making beautiful diagrams as the output of AI.

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@ohmypy @Arcaed0x There was never any question