Revisiting Order-Preserving, Gap-Avoiding Rectangle Packing.

We present an improved 2D rectangle packing heuristic that preserves the initial ordering of the rectangles while maintaining a left-to-right reading direction. We also present an algorithm configuration to fall back to a simpler algorithm that works more reliably for simple packing problems and an option to optimize the result in non-interactive scenarios. This is achieved by checking for stackability, approximating the required width, and using a strip packing algorithm to pack the rectangles with the option to improve the approximated width iteratively. We present still existing Obviously Non-Optimal packings and general problems of packings that preserve the reading direction, and discuss the problem of rectangle packing in hierarchical graphs. Moreover, the algorithm without the width approximation step can solve strip packing problems such that a reading direction is maintained.