Producing graphs

The syntax with child nodes and edges can feel lengthy, and having many curly braces may lead to small mistakes. TikZ provides a special syntax for graphs that is very concise.

To be able to use it, we have to load the graphs library with this command:

\usetikzlibrary{graphs}

This gives us a new command called \graph, which generates even complex graphs with short specifications. Here’s a quick example of how it looks, representing a classic LaTeX compiling process:

\begin{tikzpicture}[ nodes = {text depth = 1ex,
    text height = 2ex}]
  \graph { tex -> dvi -> ps -> pdf };
\end{tikzpicture}

That highlighted \graph command produces this image:

Figure 6.16 – A simple graph

Note that we specified a text depth and height for all nodes because with the letter p in the node text, which extends below the baseline, the nodes would have different dimensions and would not be properly...