如何允许节点隔开以缩短GraphViz中的边缘？

Question

I have a digraph with 4 ranks. I'm attaching a screenshot. Very zoomed out, but conveys the idea.

What I want is to allow the second rank to space out vertically so that the lines between rank 2 and 3 are closer to horizontal. Those long lines a very hard to follow! I suppose what I'm asking is "how can I prioritise shortening edge length over keeping nodes of the same rank close together?".

I would include the source but it's very straightforward. The relevant bit:

digraph tags { rankdir=RL; overlap=false; splines=false;

Thanks!

Answer 1

You can increase the weight of the edges between ranks 2 and 3 to force these edges to be shorter. Help the solver by reducing the corresponding weights of the rank 1 to 2 edges.

Looking again, I see that you have a cluster around the items in ranks 1 and 2. This causes them to be kept as close together as possible. Removing the cluster will allow a more relaxed layout and help with the appearance. If you need the cluster, you could place invisible nodes between the groups to force them to be more spread out, but you would lose future flexibility in the layout as the hidden nodes could result in unexpected changes in layout.