daVinci V2.1 is a major release with a lot of significant new features over the previous version of daVinci.

All new features, compared to previous release V2.0.x, are described below in the following categories (you can click on the links for quick access):

• Fully incremental graph layout
• Subgraph abstractions using incremental layout
• Completely rewritten, much faster graph layout algorithm
• New automatic layout functions
• Fine-Tuning for all layout orientations
• Visualization rules (API)
• Pop-Up menus for nodes and edges (API)
• Drag and Drop for nodes and edges (API)
• All open windows accessible via API commands
• Some more enhancements to the API
• New command-line options
• New Attributes for Nodes and Edges
• grapheditor supports all new API features, including drag and drop
• Several bug fixes and reduced memory footprint
• Shortcomings

• get much more performance. For example: When applied to a test graph with about 1000 nodes and 1500 edges, menu function Layout/Improve All is about 40 times faster in daVinci V2.1 than in V2.0.3.
• calculate a layout with fewer edge crossings. A new optimization phase gives slightly better results than in earlier releases.

With the new menu Layout/Improve Selected Nodes you can rearrange only the selected nodes and the edges (as in "Improve Edges") without changing the order of all other nodes. The menu "Improve Visible" has been removed.

Fine-Tuning for all layout orientations

    graph(update([new_node ("1","T1",[a("OBJECT","1")]),
		  new_node ("2","T2",[a("OBJECT","2")]),
		  new_node ("3","T2",[a("OBJECT","3")]),
		  new_node ("4","T2",[a("OBJECT","4")])],
	         [new_edge ("1-2","T1",[],"1","2"),
		  new_edge ("1-3","T2",[],"1","3"),
		  new_edge ("1-4","T3",[],"1","4")]))

    visual(new_rules([nr("T2",[a("COLOR","red")])]))
    visual(new_rules([er("T2",[a("EDGECOLOR","blue")])]))

For example: The following API command sends a graph to daVinci that contains one node with a pop-up menu (remove line breaks before sending commands to API):

    graph(new([l("1",n("T",[a("OBJECT","Node 1"),
  			    m([menu_entry("ID","Entry")])],[]))])) 

Please refer to the concepts document and to the API command category Drag and Drop to read more about drag and drop.

All open windows accessible via API commands

Please refer to the API command category Multi to read more about this new multi-window mode.

Some more enhancements to the API

• The graph(update(...)) command and the graph(update_and_change_attr(...)) now accept updates for nodes and edges in one list.
• The new command graph(change_type(...)) can be used to change the type (or class) of nodes and edges.
• The command "menu(navigation(select_childs(...)))" has been renamed to menu(navigation(select_children(...))) but the old command is still available for backward compatibility.

With the command line option -log <file> you can supply a file, in which all commands and answers of the API send to or send by daVinci are logged.

With the command line option -version daVinci will print it's current version and terminate.

New Attributes for Nodes and Edges

• _GO: new graphical object 'triangle' and 'scissors'
• BORDER: this attribute can be set to 'none', 'double' and 'single', the first value is new and especially usefull for _GO icon.
• _CGO, CCOLOR, CICONFILE are new. See below for an explanation of these attributes.

• HEAD: With this new attribute you can specify the head of an edge, which can only be a solid arrow in V2.0.x and former versions. Now the following values are allowed:
  • farrow: default behaviour as before (filled arrow)
  • arrow: arrow only drawn by its border lines
  • fcircle: filled circle
  • circle: normal circle not filled

• _CGO: graphical object for abstracted nodes like _GO, default: scissors
• CCOLOR: color of abstracted nodes, default: value of COLOR for the node
• CICONFILE: icon file, if _CGO is 'icon'

Additionally the graph editor now supports the editing of several graphs and the loading of status files.

Please refer to the grapheditor manual to read more about the new grapheditor features.

Several bug fixes and reduced memory footprint

• Correct navigation in cyclic graphs. The selection functions of menu Navigation now work as one might expect from the layout: A child is the node where the arrow of an edge is pointing to and a parent is the node where the arrow is not pointing to. There are situations where a node is both a parent and a child.
• The layout algorithm and the drawing component have been rewritten, to improve performance (see above) and reduce the memory usage of daVinci. Especially the resources allocated in the X-server are reduced by 50 percent, because the pixmap caching mechanism of daVinci now needs only one pixmap instead of two for each part of the graph.
• All Bugs which hadn't been fixed in V2.0.3 are now fixed.

• Visualization definitions can be defined only via the API.
• Edge labels are still not supported. There is a work-around for edge- labels by using graphical object text.