Two Opportunities and Challenges of Automatic Layout in Visual Languages

Diagram-based visual languages are an established means for describing and developing software systems, but have an important drawback: users need to place diagram elements properly for a diagram to be properly readable, which can take a significant amount of time (Klauske and Dziobek 2010). Automatic layout algorithms aim to automate that task to improve user productivity. These algorithms enable new ways for working with visual languages, but present new challenges as well. In this paper, I suggest to think about automatic layout algorithms in terms of challenges and opportunities. Challenges are problems that need to be solved for layout algorithms to yield good results. Opportunities are problems inherent in visual languages or new user interaction scenarios that can be tackled with automatic layout. To illustrate these terms, I summarize previous research on one example of each.