Gephi Graphviz Layout Plugin

Or, "Standing on the shoulders of two giants"

Why?

In no particular order:

• I submitted a blueprint for this, but all the cool kids bring code to the table
• I have some graphs that graphviz's layout algorithms work really well for
• I find it appealing to make some of the best layout code out there work with the best graph gui out there
• Gephi recently added SQLite support and I want to use graphviz with the stuff I'm getting out of my databases

Downloads

• In Gephi, go to plugins and install. It's in the default repo
• Example of a graph for which graphviz does a great job [the one in the screenshot above]: graph.dot
• Code: https://github.com/chunky/gephi_graphviz
• Get the plugin at the Gephi Marketplace: https://marketplace.gephi.org/plugin/graphviz-layout/

Discussion

Random thoughts:

• This plugin calls an external process. It works on Linux, Mac, Windows, but you need to have graphviz installed
• You may need to edit the "dot binary" parameter and give it the full path to a binary.
  • The Windows installer puts "dot" in the path, so I haven't seen anywhere that I needed to edit that parameter

This is by no means "done". Some outstanding stuff:

• The "stop" button to kill a long-running job does nothing