

the graph "flows" left to right, in a sequence of "node columns" (fwiw all edges are pointing rightward, and always only go one step, from column j to column j+1).Nodes 1 and 13 (and 15 and 16) should have about the same vertical separation as between (say) nodes 5 and 14.) (I suppose it's trying to leave the horizontal invisible edges in node pairs 1->15 and 13->16 unobstructed by intermediary nodes but I don't need them unobstructed. But the respective 1st/last col nodes must remain horizontally aligned. The problem is, I don't want the first and last column's nodes all splayed out vertically (see pic) there should be no more vertical separation between 1st col's nodes (ditto for last col's nodes) than between nodes in any other node column. (This Graphviz Dot vertical alignment of nodes was particularly helpful.) I've had some success using "rank" to get the columnar node alignments, and "group" to suggest horizontal node alignment between 1st and last columns. The rightmost column of nodes (depicted with dashed lines) are stand-ins for the leftmost column of nodes-so that the graph could be printed out, rolled into a cylinder, and with the dashed nodes aligned exactly "underneath" the first column's nodes, it shows a continuous (cylindrical) loop-graph. The graphs consist of successive columns of nodes. I'm trying to display "cylindrical" digraphs (in left-to-right format), so that they can be drawn on a cylinder.
