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Dagre

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Dagre is D2's default layout engine.

Reference​

https://github.com/dagrejs/dagre

Pros​

  • Very fast.
  • Battle tested (thanks to MermaidJS, which exclusively uses Dagre for its flowcharts).
  • Generally good results.
  • Theory behind algorithms are the papers that power Graphviz.
  • Renders hierarchical layouts well.

Cons​

  • Unmaintained. Development stopped in 2018.
  • Makes some inexplicable edge routing decisions occasionally (https://github.com/dagrejs/dagre/issues/256).
  • Layout algorithm is strictly hierarchical, even if underlying diagram is not hierarchical.
  • Container child to another container (or another container child) is not natively supported by dagre. D2 has added a shim to make it work, but there's some core algorithm considerations that are missed due to the shim.
  • Multi-segment edge routes are curved, instead of orthogonal. Can result in unaesthetic squiggly lines.
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