Re: laying out a hierarchical structure diagram

mariano.suarezalvarez@xxxxxxxxx wrote:
Matej Kosik wrote:

anon k wrote:

I'm trying to lay out a hierarchical structure diagram that shows how
subsets relate to their supersets.

One way is to draw it as a tree, graph theory-style, with the words at
each node. It won't always be a tree, though, because the structures
that I am depicting are not always very rigorous. (For example see below.)

Another is to use \left\{ braces, which can be done in equation
environments. It is tidier than large numbers of tree diagram branches,
but needs \textrm{} for every entry in the arrays. As it is, the markup
is messy because the tree is quite large.

Suggestions for better methods would be appreciated.

An ASCII indication of what I'm trying to achieve:

/-- Grasses
| /-- Pines -----------------\
| | +-- needle-leaved
| |-- Oaks --\ |
| | +-- flat-leaved |
Plants -+-- Trees ----+-- Elms --/ |
| | |
| \-- Spruces ---------------/
\-- Herbs

Hi,

Did you consider using tools like:
- dia
- xfig
- METAPOST (not so easy to start with but has its own virtues, like TeX)
?


PGF/Tizk is quite nice too.

Nice ideas, Metapost looks the most suitable. Having looked over these suggestions, I've come to realize that I'm trying to emulate the traditional typeset diagrams that I'm copying parts of, not to produce a drawing (i.e. to emulate an engraving or cut).

So braces are the most suitable option (large braces and rules have been in the printer's repertoire at least since the 16th century, and doing it this way has long been a standard typographical approach).

Is there a way to make braces stretch to fill a multirow in a table, that would achieve this? Then I'd be able to nest the tables without having to go into math mode.

/ A
/ a + B
| \ C
+ b / d
| | e
\ c + f
| g
\ h
.

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