Displaying information using nodes in a graph

摘要

Techniques for increasing the amount of information that may be displayed in a graph produced by a visualization system and simplifying the specification of the information. With regard to nodes of the graph, locations relative to the displayed node at which values of attributes of the displayed node are effective may be specified. 17 locations may be specified using values that indicate compass directions and whether the location is inside or outside the boundaries of the node. Among the attributes whose locations may be specified are content attributes whose values are strings or images and action attributes which specify actions that occur in response to mousing actions at the specified locations. Specification of attributes of nodes and also of links is simplified by the use of inheritance. Also disclosed are an API for setting and reading attributes and a technique for producing compressed representations of nodes at rendering time.