To run the GXLGraphpad application, make sure you've downloaded the Java Runtime Environment (JRE) from suns website (www.java.sun.com). Then double-click the gxlgraphpad.jar file provided in the binary distribution of GXLGraphpad.

The first release of the GXL Editor (GXLGraphpad) is intended as an extension to JGraphpad (see http://jgraph.sourceforge.net). That is, the editor will not expose the full range of options available in GXL, but rather serve as a format to save JGraphpad documents. In particular, some information included in a GXL document (such as attributes and hyperedges) will not be displayed.

For the moment ports are completely ignored, every node created will only contain one default port.

In the current version of GXLGraphpad (0.81) there is two additional constraints which will be removed in a later release: Hanging (non-connected) edges and hierarchical graphs (grouping). Attempts to create these structures through the JGraphpad interface will readily be ignored by the graph model.

Since existing GXL documents used by other applications probably follows application defined constraints, no layout information is stored in the actual GXL documents. Instead, layout is stored in a separate file (*.gxllayout).

A second version of the editor, designed specifically for the GXL format is planned but might take a while before being released.