Atlas: Grammar-based Procedural Generation of Data Visualizations

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Zhicheng Liu, Chen Chen, Francisco Morales, Yishan Zhao

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 View presentation:2021-10-27T13:10:00ZGMT-0600Change your timezone on the schedule page
2021-10-27T13:10:00Z

Exemplar figure, described by caption below — Atlas is a procedural visualization grammar. The grammar describes how an input graphical object is transformed into an output object through a set of high-level production rules. By concatenating these rules, we can create expressive data visualization designs in an explainable, stepwise process.

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Keywords

Software Architecture, Toolkit/Library, Language, Software Prototype, Tabular Data

Abstract

We present Atlas, a procedural grammar for constructing data visualizations. Unlike most visualization grammars which use declarative specifications to describe visualization components, Atlas exposes the generative process of a visualization through a set of concatenated high-level production rules. These rules define how graphical objects are created, transformed and coupled with abstract data. The input and output of each rule is clearly defined, allowing inspection of visualization states throughout the generative process. We demonstrate Atlas’ expressiveness through a catalog of more than 40 visualization designs, and its extensibility through a case study of area-based visualizations.