Recently a new metaphor for diagramming, the intelligent diagram has emerged. This new metaphor provides an excellent basis for diagram beautification since it automatically collects geometric constraints which capture the semantics of a diagramduring diagram construction. By applying visual-language-specific layout rules which impose additional desired constraints on the diagram component placement, we can provide powerful semantics preserving diagram beautification. We have demonstrated thefeasibility of this approach by developing a simple extension to the Penguins system which generates beautification rules from a grammatical specification of the visual language and tested the system with three example visual languages: Binary trees,state transition diagrams and mathematical equations.
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