An application programmer's interface for a diagram server

In the last few years, several tools for the automatic drawing of diagrams have been developed. Unfortunately, such tools are often self-contained applications: they manage few layout algorithms and restrict the user interaction to the one the tool is provided with. A wide variety of environments would benefit from the functionalities provided by the above tools. The goal of this paper is to build a bridge between the needs of any potential user and the services an automatic layout tool can furnish it. To this end, the authors define the structure of an interaction language that allows any application to exploit the capabilities furnished by a wide variety of automatic drawing tools.