[instaviz-users] Instaviz, but on computers

[Ryan Schmidt]

On Mar 22, 2009, at 15:55, Daniel May wrote:

> 2009/3/23 Roger Taylor <rogertaylor at gmail.com>
>> On Mar 21, 2009, at 14:17, Roger Taylor wrote:
>>
>>> > Is anyone out there able to make (or know of) a Mac/Windows/Linux
>>> > version of the iPhone Instaviz software?
>>> >
>>> > I'd like to buy copies of something like this for the people in my
>>> > lab here at Vanderbilt.
>>>
>>> Instaviz uses the Graphviz engine, so just download Graphviz for  
>>> Mac,
>>> Windows or Linux. It's free.
>>>
>>> http://graphviz.org/
>>>
>>> This doesn't include the finger-drawing stuff which is unique to
>>> Instaviz. With Graphviz proper, you write text files that describe
>>> the relationships of nodes in your graph, and Graphviz draws them.
>>
>> Thanks, but I'm not a programmer, so I'd need something with a  
>> modern GUI.

I would say you do not need to be a programmer to create Graphviz  
graph description files. Then again, I am a programmer, so perhaps  
I'm a bad judge of this. But it doesn't seem too difficult to create  
a text file that reads:

digraph {
	a->b
	a->c
}

And to open that in the Mac OS X GUI Graphviz viewer to get the  
resulting image:

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There are probably viewers for other operating systems available, and  
the command line utilities are certainly available.


>> Someone mentioned OmniGraffle, which I already have (and love).  
>> Unfortunately it is Mac only and it  doesn't allow exporting  
>> to .dot files.

I thought the latest version of OmniGraffle just gained Graphviz  
support in some way. So I thought it would support Graphviz files  
(the proper extension for which, by the way, has recently changed  
from .dot to .gv). I haven't used OmniGraffle myself but a friend who  
does sent me a screenshot from the latest release notes, which  
mentioned Graphviz, because he knows I'm interested in Graphviz.


>> I do educational research in poor K-12 schools, and they don't  
>> have the funds to buy the dozens of copies of "Inspiration" -  
>> which is the only comparable cross-platform software on the market.
>>
>> Here's my dream software: A cross-platform open-source program  
>> that uses the .dot language, but is easy enough for normal users.
>>
>> Is there a "Firefox/Thunderbird/Gimp" equivalent for graphs?


Since this is for schools, you could make it part of your lesson to  
first teach students about open-source software, how to get and  
install it, how to locate the available documentation, and then read  
it together and use it to write the graph description files Graphviz  
needs. Why not teach the next generation from an early age about the  
alternatives that open-source software offers and how to help  
themselves use it?


> Ditto Roger's comments, but adding that having it run from the  
> cloud would be good ;)


Meaning, as I understand it: you would like to be able to use the  
functionality without having to install a program, and for the  
computationally-intensive tasks to occur on a server instead of on  
your computer, and you would access the functionality via, say, a web  
browser.

Webdot is available which you can install on a server to do the  
Graphviz rendering. I am working on a new version of Webdot to  
modernize it a bit and offer some features I need for another  
project, which is that I am working on integrating Graphviz with the  
Google Visualization API.

http://code.google.com/apis/visualization/

Google Visualizations allow you to describe your data in a simple  
spreadsheet format and then display it using any number of available  
visualization algorithms, from bar, line and pie charts all the way  
to, soon, Graphviz graphs. So instead of writing the graph  
description file I showed above, you could get the same output by  
creating a spreadsheet containing something like:

tail    head
a       b
a      c

Would this meet your needs?