To find the fundamental polygon we use the following theorem
Figure: Fundamental polygon of theorem 
be integers greater or equal than two
and let 
be an integer greater than two, excepting the case
when is three and all 
are equal to two. Then for each
in an open set in
(if is greater than three; 
if is three),
there exists a hyperbolic polygon (see figure )
with 
consecutive sides of lengths
and respective interior angles
,
where 
(if is greater than three),
, 
and 
are uniquely determined and satisfy
Moreover, for any such polygon, the group 
generated by the
elliptic elements 
which pair consecutive sides of lengths
, is a Fuchsian group with the
given fundamental polygon; furthermore, uniformizes 
with signature
and has a presentation of the form
Proof: See [GR93].
Still following [GR93] we define define a homomorphism
by extension of 
, for 
;
then 
is a torsion-free Fuchsian group;
in fact, it is the smallest normal subgroup of generated by
the words 
.
Also, 
is a compact Riemann surfaces of
genus 
, and the natural projection from
to 
is a Galois covering with the prescribed
signature and covering group 
which is isomorphic to
.
Figure: Polygon drawn using DFS labeling
Figure: Polygon drawn using BFS labeling
Figure: Polygon drawn using ``symmetric'' BFS labeling
So we want to construct the fundamental region 
for 
,
taking 
images of 
under elements of .
To choose this images we label each element in with a word on
the generators and then use that word to construct an element in
,
standard techniques,
such as breadth first search (BFS) or depth first search (DFS),
produce strange labelings that leaded to unconnected or
non-symmetrical polygons,
see for example figures , and
;
in all of them is
The best results are obtained using a modified version of BFS,
the idea is to maintain symmetry according to the first generator,
let us call
the first generator; as in BFS a queue is used to keep the vertices that need processing, this queue is initialized with the identity vertex and those vertices where the user has already chosen a label (this is done to respect user preference, see below) then for each vertex
in the queue the vertices corresponding to
are labeled as
, where
is the label for
. Now each vertex
in the queue is processed as follows, unless already labeled a neighbour
of
across an edge coloured
is labeled
, where
is the label of
, and added to the queue (this is normal BFS), the vertices
are labeled
and added to the queue, unless they have been labeled already; the process continues until the queue is empty.
Sometimes the user may want a different labeling of the group, Unifpack provides methods to change some words and all labeling algorithms respect user preferences.
Figure: A fundamental polygon parametrized by side lengths
Figure: A fundamental polygon parametrized by angles
Sometimes a better set of parameters than the ones provided by
theorem can be found
(see figures and ),
to exploit this possibility Unifpack defines polygon types,
when calculating the polygon from the group it tries to determine
the best polygon type for the group,
mechanisms are provided to add new (user defined) polygon types.
A polygon type also calculates initial or default values for the parameters it take, the fundamental region
the generators of the group
, checks if it can handle a presentation, provides methods to draw
and I/O functions.
