Ubuntu Manpage: dot - filter for drawing directed graphs

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
       patchwork - filter for squarified tree maps
       osage - filter for array-based layouts

SYNOPSIS

       dot [options] [files]
       neato [options] [files]
       twopi [options] [files]
       circo [options] [files]
       fdp [options] [files]
       sfdp [options] [files]
       patchwork [options] [files]
       osage [options] [files]

DESCRIPTION

These are a collection of programs for drawing graphs. There is actually only one main
program; the specific layout algorithms are implemented as plugins. Thus, they largely
share all of the same command-line options.

dot draws directed graphs. It works well on directed acyclic graphs and other graphs that
can be drawn as hierarchies or have a natural ``flow.''

neato draws undirected graphs using a ``spring'' model and reducing the related energy
(see Kamada and Kawai, Information Processing Letters 31:1, April 1989).

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.

patchwork draws the graph as a squarified treemap (see M. Bruls et al., ``Squarified
treemaps'', Proc. Joint Eurographics and IEEE TCVG Symp. on Visualization, 2000, pp.
33-42). The clusters of the graph are used to specify the tree.

osage draws the graph using its cluster structure. For a given cluster, each of its
subclusters is laid out internally. Then the subclusters, plus any remaining nodes, are
repositioned based on the cluster's pack and packmode attributes.

OUTPUT FORMATS

       Graphviz uses an extensible plugin mechanism for its output  renderers,  so  to  see  what
       output  formats  your  installation  of dot supports you can use ``dot -T:'' and check the
       warning message.  Also, The plugin mechanism  supports  multiple  implementations  of  the
       output formats, allowing variations in the renderers and formatters.  To see what variants
       are available for a particular output format, use, for  example:  ``dot  -Tpng:''  and  to
       force a particular variant, use, for example: ``dot -Tpng:gd''

       Traditionally, Graphviz supports the following:
       -Tdot (Dot format containing layout information),
       -Txdot (Dot format containing complete layout information),
       -Tps (PostScript),
       -Tpdf (PDF),
       -Tsvg -Tsvgz (Structured Vector Graphics),
       -Tfig (XFIG graphics),
       -Tpng (png bitmap graphics),
       -Tgif (gif bitmap graphics),
       -Tjpg -Tjpeg (jpeg bitmap graphics),
       -Tjson (xdot information encoded in JSON),
       -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/content/output-formats.

       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,  normally  using  the  extension  .gv,  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.

       The language accepts both C‐style comments /*C...*/ or //...

       Attribute names and  values  are  ordinary  (C‐style)  strings.   The  following  sections
       describe attributes that control graph layout.

       A     more    complete    description    of    the    language    can    be    found    at
       http://www.graphviz.org/content/dot-language.

GRAPH, NODE AND EDGE ATTRIBUTES

Graphviz uses the name=value attributes, attached to graphs, subgraphs, nodes and edges,
to tailor the layout and rendering. We list the more prominent attributes below. The
complete list is available at http://www.graphviz.org/content/attrs.

Attributes Common to Nodes, Edges, Clusters and Graphs
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.'')

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, or
cyan, or a "#rrggbb" (red, green, blue, 2 hex characters each) value. See
http://www.graphviz.org/content/attrs#kcolor and http://www.graphviz.org/content/color-
names for further details.

fontsize=n sets the label type size to n points.

fontname=name sets the label font family name.

label=text where text may include escaped newlines \n, \l, or \r for center, left, and
right justified lines. The string '\G' value will be replaced by the graph name. For
node labels, the string '\N' value will be replaced by the node name. For edges, if the
substring '\T' is found in a label, it will be replaced by the name of the tail node; if
the substring '\H' is found in a label, it will be replaced by the name of the head node;
if the substring '\E' value is found in a label it will be replaced by:
tail_node_name->head_node_name or by: tail_node_name--head_node_name for undirected
graphs.

Graphviz also supports special HTML-like labels for constructing complex node content. A
full‐description of these is given at http://www.graphviz.org/content/node-shapes#html.

If a node has shape=record, the label may contain recursive box lists delimited by { | }.
Port identifiers in labels are set off by angle brackets < >.

Graph Attributes
size="x,y" specifies the maximum bounding box of drawing in inches.

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).

ordering=out constrains order of out‐edges in a subgraph according to their file sequence.

rotate=90 sets landscape mode. (orientation=land is backward compatible but obsolete.)

center=n a non‐zero value centers the drawing on the page.

color=colorvalue sets foreground color (bgcolor for background).

overlap=mode. This specifies what algorithm should do if any nodes overlap. If mode is
false, the program uses the Prism algorithm 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. Since the dot algorithm always
produces a layout with no node overlaps, this attribute is only useful with other layouts.

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 must 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.

(dot‐specific attributes)

nodesep=f sets the minimum separation between nodes.

ranksep=f sets the minimum separation between ranks.

rankdir=LR|RL|BT requests a left‐to‐right, right‐to‐left, or bottom‐to‐top, drawing.

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.

(neato‐specific attributes)
mode=val. Algorithm for minimizing energy in the layout. By default, neato uses stress
majorization. If mode=KK, it uses a version of gradient descent.

model=val. The neato model computes the desired distances between all pairs of vertices.
By default, it uses the length of the shortest path. If model is set to circuit, a
circuit-resistance model is used. If model is set to subset, it uses a model whereby the
edge length is the number of nodes that are neighbors of exactly one of the edge's
vertices.

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.

(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=builtin_polygon record epsf
builtin_polygon can be such values as plaintext, ellipse, oval, circle, egg, triangle,
box, diamond, trapezium, parallelogram, house, hexagon, octagon, note, tab, box3d, or
component,, among others. (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.

See http://www.graphviz.org/content/node-shapes for a complete description of node shapes.

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.

style=filled solid dashed dotted bold invis

xlabel="text" specifies a label that will be place near, but outside, of a node. The
normal label string is placed within the node shape.

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="text" 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.

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.

(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.

(neato‐ and fdp‐specific attributes)
pin=val. If val is true, the node will remain at its initial position.

Edge Attributes
weight=val where val is the cost of the edge. For dot, weights must be non-negative
integers. Values greater than 1 tend to shorten the edge; weight 0 flat edges are
ignored for ordering nodes. In twopi, a weight of 0 will cause the edge to be ignored in
constructing the underlying spanning tree. For neato and fdp, a heavier weight will put
more emphasis on the algorithm achieving an edge length closer to that specified by the
edge's len attribute.

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.

target="text" 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="text" 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. Specifies the shape of the glyph
occurring where the edge touches the head or tail node, respectively. Note that this only
specifies the shape. The dir attribute determines whether or not the glyph is drawn.

arrowsize=val specifies a multiplicative scale factor for the size of the arrowhead.
inv_length=6,inv_width=7,dot_radius=2)

headlabel,taillabel=text for labels appearing near the head and tail nodes of an edge.
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 labelangle (in degrees CCW) specify the placement of head and tail
labels.

decorate draws line from edge to label.

samehead,sametail aim edges having the same value to the same port, using the average
landing point.

(dot‐specific attributes)
constraint=false causes an edge to be ignored for rank assignment.

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).

xlabel="text" Edge labels in dot are treated as special types of nodes, with space
allocated for them during node layout. This can sometimes deform the edge routing. If an
xlabel is used instead, the label is placed after all nodes and edges have been
positioned. In turn, this may mean that there is some overlap among the labels.

(neato and fdp‐specific attributes)
len=f sets the optimal length of an edge. The default is 1.0.

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.

-c configure plugins.

-m memory test (observe no growth with top, kill when done).

-qlevel set level of message suppression. The default is 1.

-sfscale scale input by fscale, the default is 72.

-y invert y coordinate in output.

-V (version) prints version information and exits.

-? prints the usage and exits.

A complete description of the available command‐line options can be found at
https://www.graphviz.org/doc/info/command.html.

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@graphviz.org>
       John C. Ellson <ellson@research.att.com>
       Yifan Hu <yifanhu@yahoo.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).