Drawing maps on oriented surfaces

TL;DR

The paper introduces 'planar_draw', a program for drawing maps on oriented surfaces, including higher genus surfaces, with customizable options and TikZ output for LaTeX integration.

Contribution

It presents a new software tool that extends map drawing capabilities to higher genus surfaces and integrates with graph embedding programs.

Findings

Supports drawing maps on surfaces of genus at least one

Allows customization of map features and embedding options

Produces TikZ files for LaTeX use

Abstract

In this article we describe a program -- called planar_draw -- to draw maps on oriented surfaces in the plane. The drawings are coded as tikz files that can easily be manipulated and used in latex documents. Next to plane maps -- a case for which already several programs exist -- the program allows to draw maps of genus at least one inside a fundamental polygon or with non-contractible cycles displayed as disjoint cycles that have to be identified. Several options allow to tailor the output for individual needs -- e.g.\ by forcing some edges to be completely inside the fundamental polygon. In combination with a program embedding graphs, the tool can also be used for graphs that do not already come with an embedding in an orientable surface.