 Honorable Mention

Encodable: Configurable Grammar for Visualization Components

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Krist Wongsuphasawat

 External link (DOI) 

 View presentation:2020-10-28T17:10:00ZGMT-0600Change your timezone on the schedule page
2020-10-28T17:10:00Z

Exemplar figure — There are so many libraries of visualization components nowadays with their APIs often different from one another. Could these components be more similar, both in terms of the APIs and common functionalities? For someone who is developing a new visualization component, how should the API look like? This work drew inspiration from visualization grammar, decoupled the grammar from its rendering engine and adapted it into a configurable grammar for individual components called Encodable. Encodable helps component authors define grammar for their components, and parse encoding specifications from users into utility functions for the implementation.

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Direct link to video on YouTube: https://youtu.be/Q7wQSR_pYcA

Keywords

Information visualization, systems, toolkits, API design, reusable visualization, visualization component

Abstract

There are so many libraries of visualization components nowadays with their APIs often different from one another. Could these components be more similar, both in terms of the APIs and common functionalities? For someone who is developing a new visualization component, how should the API look like? This work drew inspiration from visualization grammar, decoupled the grammar from its rendering engine and adapted it into a configurable grammar for individual components called Encodable. Encodable helps component authors define grammar for their components, and parse encoding specifications from users into utility functions for the implementation. This paper explains the grammar design and demonstrates how to build components with it.