Relationship diagrams

[Guest FirefoxRocks]

Can anyone recommend a script to draw a tree diagram? I have browsed through quite a few, but I need one that can draw nodes with more than one parent.

[Ingolme]

As soon as a node has more than one parent, the structure is no longer a tree (at least when it comes to computer terms). I can't think of any applications that would do what you're asking at the moment, though there probably are some programs specialized in making diagrams.

[Guest FirefoxRocks]

Ok, I need a script to draw hierarchical diagrams, or whatever the appropriate term is. Currently I'm using a desktop software, yEd Graph Editor, to generate the diagram, and then exporting it as a PNG and/or SVG file, and uploading it, but I would like to have a PHP script so that it can be more flexible and less work.

[Synook]

Hierarchical diagrams still can't have more than one parent... that would just be weird. Maybe you are thinking of a graph?

[iwato]

Can anyone recommend a script to draw a tree diagram? I have browsed through quite a few, but I need one that can draw nodes with more than one parent.

Can you not turn the tree upside down?Roddy

[Guest FirefoxRocks]

Ok in case you aren't understanding what I would like to do, here are a few examples of diagrams that I want to generate:http://portal.trap17.com/feral/oldTechTrees/Take a look at the SVG ones if that helps. At the very least the nodes can have one or more parents.

[justsomeguy]

Like Ingolme pointed out, technically this is not a tree. This is a tree:

Mathematically, it is a tree, more specifically an arborescence: an acyclic connected graph where each node has zero or more children nodes and at most one parent node.

You are talking about a directed graph, not a tree.Are you saying that you want an algorithm that can graphically lay out and draw any directed graph? We've actually got a job in house now where drawing things like that is part of the software. Even though we're doing it in Java, I think we still estimated 400 hours to get the drawing components finished. If you find a good layout algorithm, let me know.