What are some edge overlap minimization techniques when laying out a graph? (Preferably related to GraphViz) Also are there any existing software that can layout a graph in a planar fashion?
Current Layout - http://www.evecakes.com/doodles/master.gif
The pink section in the upper left hand corner looks fine while the light blue section has some avoidable edge overlaps.
The following open source Java library has a couple of algorithms which may help in laying out planar graphs. https://github.com/trickl/trickl-graph
In particular, the following classes provide analytic solutions to the problem:
ChrobakPayneLayout (based on the Boost C++ implementation by Aaron Windsor) http://www.boost.org/doc/libs/1_37_0/libs/graph/doc/straight_line_drawing.html
FoldFreeLayout (based on Anchor-Free Distributed Localization in Sensor Networks
What you might want to do is use something like this as the first "attempt" which ensures no overlaps, although may not look great. Then you can apply a force-directed algorithm to space out the nodes more fairly.
Unfortunately, the library has only just been released so is short on documentation. It might however be useful by providing some actual code rather than just theory.
