On Planar Straight-Line Dominance Drawings

Abstract

We study the following question, which has been considered since the 90's: Does every $st$-planar graph admit a planar straight-line dominance drawing? We show concrete evidence for the difficulty of this question, by proving that, unlike upward planar straight-line drawings, planar straight-line dominance drawings with prescribed $y$-coordinates do not always exist and planar straight-line dominance drawings cannot always be constructed via a contract-draw-expand inductive approach. We also show several classes of $st$-planar graphs that always admit a planar straight-line dominance drawing. These include $st$-planar $3$-trees in which every stacking operation introduces two edges incoming into the new vertex, $st$-planar graphs in which every vertex is adjacent to the sink, $st$-planar graphs in which no face has the left boundary that is a single edge, and $st$-planar graphs that have a leveling with span at most two.

A preliminary version appears at WADS '25