Recognizing rectangle of influence drawable graphs

Abstract

Given two points x and y in the plane the rectangle of influence of x and y is the axis-aligned rectangle having x and y at opposite corners. The rectangle of influence drawing of a graph G is a straight-line drawing of G such that (i) for each pair of adjacent vertices u, v of G the rectangle of influence of the points representing u and v is empty (i.e. does not contain any other point representing any other vertex of G except possibly the two representing u and v) and (ii) for each pair of non adjacent vertices u, v of G the rectangle of influence of the points representing u and v is not empty. In this paper we consider several classes of graphs, and we characterize, for each class, which graphs of the class have a rectangle of influence drawing. For each class we show that the problem of testing whether a graph G has a rectangle of influence drawing can be done in linear time. Furthermore, if the test for G is affirmative, a rectangle of influence drawing of G can be constructed in linear time with the real RAM model of computation.