Introduction to the Graph Editor

The graph editor is an interactive tool to modify an existing graph or to build a new graph from scratch. With the editor, the user is able to create new nodes and edges, delete existing nodes and edges, modify the attributes of nodes and edges, and so on.

The editor is not an independent program with a separate user interface. Instead, it is a plug-in like program without a user interface that communicates with the uDraw(Graph) API (please follow this link to learn how to observe this communication). From the user's point of view, all graph manipulation is done inside the uDraw(Graph) base window. To access the graph manipulation functions, the editor adds some extra menus, icons and dialogs to the uDraw(Graph) user interface. From a technical point of view, uDraw(Graph) and the editor are two independent processes with different responsibilities. The editor has its own graph data structure. It maintains and manipulates the graph depending on menu events from uDraw(Graph) and sends updates to the graph structure back to the API for visualization after each operation. So the structure of the graph is never manipulated directly in uDraw(Graph), only the application program (i.e. the graph editor in this case) is able to do so. You can read more about uDraw(Graph) applications in the API reference.

Please refer to the graph editor tutorial to learn how to use it.