[BUG] ring / radial layouts intermittently do not render as rings

[DataBoyTX]

Describe the bug

User reported an issue where the radial layouts sometimes do not render, and it creates more of force-directed layout instead of radial. I was able to reproduce this with our demo notebook after running the notebook several times.

To Reproduce

Run the following pygraphistry demo notebook until the issue appears:
layout_categorical_ring.ipynb

Expected behavior
ring layout should also appear

Actual behavior
looked more like force-directed layout than ring

Screenshots

Browser environment (please complete the following information):

Chrome is up to date
Version 131.0.6778.205 (Official Build) (64-bit)

Edition	Windows 11 Home
Version	24H2
Installed on	‎11/‎15/‎2024
OS build	26100.2605
Experience	Windows Feature Experience Pack 1000.26100.36.0

Graphistry GPU server environment
AWS AMI - v2.41.17

PyGraphistry API client environment

pyg v0.35.3

[lmeyerov]

I think there are potentially a couple of diff issues here:

• initial layout when setting play=0 is still via FDL instead of passed in

  • race on loading, e.g., tick-before-play=0? or a dropped message?
  • initial positions look 'close' to passed in, vs a random init seed / FDL one, suggesting the race

• axis don't render

  • axis are technically an encoding...
  • ... and if encodings are slow to load, we skip and proceed ...
  • .. and even those axis are 'fast' encodings, they may sequenced after slower non-axis ones?