startType

How to initially layout nodes

Has the syntax (style)?(seed)?.

If style is present, it must be one of the strings:

  • "regular": place nodes regularly about a circle
  • "self": run an abbreviated version of neato to obtain the initial layout
  • "random": place nodes randomly in a unit square.

If seed is present, it specifies a seed for the random number generator. If seed is a positive number, this is used as the seed. If it is anything else, the current time, and possibly the process id, is used to pick a seed, thereby making the choice more random. In this case, the seed value is stored in the graph.

If the value is just "random", a time-based seed is chosen.

Note that input positions, specified by a node's pos attribute, are only used when the style is "random".

Attributes

startType is a valid type for: