CONTEST A: LINDENSTRASSE

Preamble

The data in the graph have been extracted from a poster in the book `Das Lindenstrasse-Universum' by J. C. Huth (Ed.), Köln 1998.

Here, you can see a part of the poster. The most important characters are shown with their photos. The other characters are shown only as shapes. To each character a colour is associated: blue for currently active characters, yellow for currently inactive characters, grey for dead characters, and white for characters that never appeared personally. The relations between the characters are shown by lines in different colours: purple for business, orange for friendship, red for partnership, green for family connections, and blue for hostile or antagonistic relationships.

There are three visualization tasks for Graph A; each of them will be judged separately, and awarded separate prizes:

• Produce a drawing of the current situation, i.e., only active characters and relations should be shown in the drawing.
• Produce a drawing of the whole graph, showing current and past relations.
• Show the development of the graph over time: start with the characters and relations in the first episode, and show how the graph changes dynamically over the course of the show.

Data Format

ID, Sex, FromTo, Name, Comment, Born, Died, Picture, Size, Color

ID is the identity number; this number is in the range from 1 to 234 (number of nodes).

A node is either a character (picture or symbol) or an artificial node introduced by us: marriage nodes are associated with pairs of characters in case they are connected by marriage; moreover we needed to introduce invisible nodes, since sometimes two different relations have merged at one point (for more details see below).

For nodes associated with characters, Sex is either `f' for female or `m' for male. In one special case it is `b', since the corresponding symbol shows a female and a male character. In another special case the symbol shows a woman and her grandchildren; here, the symbol is an `a'. For the artificial nodes, Sex describes the type of the marriage: `w' (widowed) node for a marriage in which at least one of the partners has died, `d' for a divorced marriage, and `m' for a still existing marriage. For invisible nodes, Sex is `i'.

FromTo gives the episode numbers in which the character played actively; FromTo can be any sequence of characters bounded by brackets `[...]' (also empty brackets are allowed `[]'). The format is either `seit_157' which means that the character is active from episode 157 on; or it has the format `4-475' which means that the character played in episodes 4,5,...,475; or it has format `220-310/566,665' which means that the character was active in episodes 220 through 310 and in episodes 566 and 665.

Name contains the name of the character; it can be any string not containing a blank. For non-characters the name is `U'.

Comment can be any string not containing a blank. `U' denotes an empty comment.

Born gives the date of birth of the character (if known); otherwise it is `U'. Born is a string of numbers separated by `.'; sometimes only the year is given.

Died gives the date of death of the character (if known); otherwise it is `U'. Died is a string of numbers separated by `.'; sometimes only the year is given.

Picture is either `p' or `s' for nodes associated with characters. `p' means that the character is shown with his photo; `s' means that the character is shown as a symbol. For the artificial nodes, Picture is `m'.

The sizes of the nodes are associated with the ages of the associated characters; this difference is only made for symbol nodes: children have small symbols `s', all the others have big symbols `b'. For artificial nodes, Size is `U'.

To each character (picture and symbol) a color is associated: blue for currently active characters, yellow for currently unactive characters, grey for already dead characters and white for characters that never showed up personally in the soap opera (only by name). In the poster, there is one special symbol combination which consists of two characters, one is yellow and the other is grey. This one is denoted by an `a'. The colors of marriage nodes are `U' (unimportant).

The relations are given by the edges in the graph. The edge list contains for each edge:

ID, Origin, Destination, Color, Type

ID is the identity number; this number is in the range from 1 to 326 (number of edges).

Origin and Destination denote the IDs of the two endnodes of the edge; most of the edges are undirected; only some of the edges representing family relationships are directed: the son and daughter relations. Here, the tail of the edge is given by Origin, and the head by Destination.

Color gives the type of the relationship; each type is given by different color: family relations are shown in green `g', friendships are shown in orange `o', partner relations in red `r', unfriendly relationships in blue `b', and business relations in purple `p'.

For family relations, the Type of the relation is either `s' (son or daughter), `b' (brother or sister), `a' (adoption) or `o' (other). Only the son or daughter relations have an arrow in the poster. For the other relations, Type says if the relationship is currently active `c' or not `p' (`c' stands for current relation and `p' for past relation).

This is the end of the description. A simplified version of the data is available in two formats: for the LEDA data type graphwin (.gw-format), A.gw; and in .gml format A.gml.

All questions about this graph should be directed to Petra Mutzel <mutzel@mpi-sb.mpg.de>.