Extending Partial Representations of Rectangular Duals with Given Contact Orientations

A rectangular dual of a graph $G$ is a contact representation of $G$ by axis-aligned rectangles such that (i) no four rectangles share a point and (ii) the union of all rectangles is a rectangle. The partial representation extension problem for rectangular duals asks whether a given partial rectangular dual can be extended to a rectangular dual, that is, whether there exists a rectangular dual where some vertices are represented by prescribed rectangles. Combinatorially, a rectangular dual can be described by a regular edge labeling (REL), which determines the orientations of the rectangle contacts. We characterize the RELs that admit an extension, which leads to a linear-time testing algorithm. In the affirmative, we can construct an extension in linear time.