¹École de technologie supérieure, Montréal, Canada

Correspondence: Michael J McGuffin, E-mail: michael.mcguffin@etsmtl.ca; Jean-Marc Robert, E-mail: jean-marc.robert@etsmtl.ca

^*Corresponding author

Received 23 September 2008; Revised 12 January 2009; Accepted 13 January 2009; Published online 21 May 2009.

Abstract

A mathematical evaluation and comparison of the space-efficiency of various 2D graphical representations of tree structures is presented. As part of the evaluation, a novel metric called the mean area exponent is introduced that quantifies the distribution of area across nodes in a tree representation, and that can be applied to a broad range of different representations of trees. Several representations are analyzed and compared by calculating their mean area exponent as well as the area they allocate to nodes and labels. Our analysis inspires a set of design guidelines as well as a few novel tree representations that are also presented.