Hi everyone!

I have a complex directed graph, which may have circular references and which may also have unconnected clusters or nodes, that I need to create a drawable layout from. I work in C# and my solution needs to work on .NET and Mono.

At the moment I'm using Microsoft Automatic Graph Layout aka MSAGL for this. It creates great results but have serious licensing issues, forcing me to look for other solutions. It should also be noted that the resulting graph is to be interactive, responding to clicked nodes etc, so just using some tool to generate an image from a description won't cut it.

What are your recommendations here?

Crap, I forgot to reply to this when I first read it.

I do know about GraphViz and dot. The problem is that it was never meant to be used as a library, only as a fairly complete standalone tool. This makes it very awkward to work with, especially when you have non-text content in nodes. MSAGL lets me define a shape for each node and then leaves me to draw it. Dot also seems meant for vector formats and/or print. I suppose I'll have to create some hackish solution using it anyway, but I was hoping someone had some better idea.

I can only contribute my web-searching skills. In case you haven't found it, this thread in Stack Overflow has some good information about the subject (although it's a bit old). In particular, it links to a good description of a graph layout algorithm, in case you decide to roll your own (which sounds like a great little project, if you have the time).