Delivering the Potential of Diagrammatic Logics

Diagrammatic notations and reasoning have become a prominent focus of research over the last two decades. We have now reached a point where the techniques required to formalize diagrammatic logics and prove meta-level results, such as soundness and completeness, are well understood. Moreover, we have insight into what makes effective diagrams. However, the majority of progress has been on diagrammatic logics that are very limited in expressiveness. Whilst such logics are exemplars of the current state-of-the-art and are useful in simple cases, they have not yet realized their full potential in real world applications. This paper summarizes the existing state-of-theart in diagrammatic logics and poses a set of open questions. The paper will discuss the need for software tools to support the creation and use of diagrammatic logics which are needed for large-scale real-world take-up. Significant research is still necessary to deliver the full potential of diagrammatic logics.