Solving the spaghetti plate syndrome in a control-flow language with a VLSI-like solution

Abstract

Control-flow visual languages are often criticized as generating diagrams that look like a spaghetti plate. In this paper, we describe a solution we implemented to manage the visual complexity of control-flow diagrams with a very large number of nodes. Our solution is based on subdividing the display window into a sort of grid, with some areas where mostly nodes are displayed and other areas where mostly edges are displayed.