# Does anyone have ideas on how to make this commutative diagram look nicer

Hi I am trying to draw a long exact sequence and importantly with the terms appearing in threes. Unfortunately what comes out looks awful, does anyone have any ideas of how to make it look nicer? Specifically the diagonal arrows look nasty, are there ways perhaps to bend them or make them appear nicer? Also in the third row I was putting '...'s to cover the terms in between, but this looks bad and the diagonal arrows don't arrange themselves uniformly then. Any suggestions would be very much appreciated :)

I am using xy pic, here is my code:

Our relative long exact sequence is given by

$\xymatrix{ 0 \ar[rr] && H^0(M, \Dd M) \ar[rr] && H^0(M) \ar[rr] && H^0(\Dd M) \ar[dllll] \\ && H^1(M, \Dd M) \ar[rr] && H^1(M) \ar[rr] && H^1(\Dd M) \ar[dllll] \\ && \cdots \ar[rr] && \cdots \ar[rr] && \cdots \ar[dllll] & \\ && H^n(M, \Dd M) \ar[rr] && H^n(M) \ar[rr] && 0}$


And here is what it looks like

(I have used double column spacing to fill the page space)

Here's an option using the more modern and versatile tikz-cd, just in case you want to switch:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{tikz-cd}
\usepackage{calc}

\newcommand\Dd{\partial}
\tikzset{
Curved/.style={
rounded corners,to path={ -- ([xshift=2ex]\tikztostart.east)
|- (#1) [near end]\tikztonodes
-| ([xshift=-2ex]\tikztotarget.west)
-- (\tikztotarget)
}
}
}
\newcommand{\plhold}[1]{%
\makebox[\widthof{$#1$}]{$\vphantom{#1}{\cdots}$}%
}

\begin{document}

\begin{tikzcd}%[column sep=2cm]
0 \ar[r]
& H^0(M, \Dd M) \ar[r]
& H^0(M) \ar[r]\arrow[d, phantom, ""{coordinate, name=A}]
& H^0(\Dd M) \arrow[dll,Curved=A]
\\
& H^1(M, \Dd M) \ar[r]
& H^1(M) \ar[r] \arrow[d, phantom, ""{coordinate, name=B}]
& H^1(\Dd M) \arrow[dll,Curved=B]
\\
& \plhold{H^n(M, \Dd M)} \ar[r]
& \plhold{H^n(M)} \ar[r]\arrow[d, phantom, ""{coordinate, name=C}]
& \plhold{H^1(\Dd M)} \arrow[dll,Curved=C] &
\\
& H^n(M, \Dd M) \ar[r]
& H^n(M) \ar[r]
& 0
\end{tikzcd}

\end{document}


Notice that using column sep=<length> you can have a better control over the separation of columns. I left that commented out in my example code to show you how to change it to your liking.

I shamelessly borrowed the \plhold macro from egreg's answer.

• Thanks very much! I'm definitely going to spend some time practising tikz this is the second time someone has pointed out that it work nicer than xy for commutative diagrams. – Aerinmund Fagelson Feb 21 '15 at 15:45

You may improve it by making the dots occupy as much horizontal and vertical space as the objects they replace; bending the arrows doesn't appeal me.

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{calc}
\usepackage[all,cmtip]{xy}

\newcommand{\Dd}{\partial}
\newcommand{\plhold}[1]{%
\makebox[\widthof{$#1$}]{$\vphantom{#1}{\cdots}$}%
}

\begin{document}

$\xymatrix@C+3em{ 0 \ar[r] & H^0(M, \Dd M) \ar[r] & H^0(M) \ar[r] & H^0(\Dd M) \ar[dll] \\ & H^1(M, \Dd M) \ar[r] & H^1(M) \ar[r] & H^1(\Dd M) \ar[dll] \\ & \plhold{H^1(M, \Dd M)} \ar[r] & \plhold{H^1(M)} \ar[r] & \plhold{H^1(\Dd M)} \ar[dll] \\ & H^n(M, \Dd M) \ar[r] & H^n(M) \ar[r] & 0 }$

\end{document}


Note that you get better control on the width by acting on the column separation rather than jumping over empty columns.