Binucci, C., Di Giacomo, E., Lenhart, W. J., Liotta, G., Montecchiani, F., Nöllenburg, M., & Symvonis, A. (2023). On the Complexity of the Storyplan Problem. In P. Angelini & R. von Haxleden (Eds.), Graph Drawing and Network Visualization. GD 2022 (pp. 304–318). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-22203-0_22
Motivated by dynamic graph visualization, we study the problem of representing a graph G in the form of a storyplan, that is, a sequence of frames with the following properties. Each frame is a planar drawing of the subgraph of G induced by a suitably defined subset of its vertices. Between two consecutive frames, a new vertex appears while some other vertices may disappear, namely those whose incident edges have already been drawn in at least one frame. In a storyplan, each vertex appears and disappears exactly once. For a vertex (edge) visible in a sequence of consecutive frames, the point (curve) representing it does not change throughout the sequence. Note that the order in which the vertices of G appear in the sequence of frames is a total order. In the StoryPlan problem, we are given a graph and we want to decide whether there exists a total order of its vertices for which a storyplan exists. We prove that the problem is NP-complete, and complement this hardness with two parameterized algorithms, one in the vertex cover number and one in the feedback edge set number of G. Also, we prove that partial 3-trees always admit a storyplan, which can be computed in linear time. Finally, we show that the problem remains NP-complete in the case in which the total order of the vertices is given as part of the input and we have to choose how to draw the frames.
