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...