GRAD: A New Graph Drawing and Analysis Library

Several important choices need to be made during the development of domain-specific languages, including the one regarding which concrete syntax to implement. There are several alternatives, with graphical and textual syntaxes being the most common ones. Having in mind that the developers and domain experts often have different preferences, supporting both is sometimes the best option. This means that models created using textual editors might need to be opened using separately developed graphical editors. Graphical elements corresponding to model elements must then be automatically created and positioned. Doing so in an aesthetically pleasing way requires usage of graph layout algorithms. Since implementing them is not an easy task, most developers have to rely on existing solutions. There are many Java libraries which have such capabilities, but they all have certain limitations and room for improvement, some of which are addressed in a new graph drawing and analysis library presented in this paper.