Sparklines to be in ConTeXt?
Hey, what do you people actually think about E. Tufte's Sparklines?² They are a great and innovative thing in my mind; both in the information mediating and the typographic sense. There's a bare-bones LaTeX package on CTAN, but when I think about it, this technique could find a perfect place in ConTeXt's framework (say MetaPost, XML, Scripting and so on. There's even some kind of Ruby implementation³). - Tobias ² http://www.edwardtufte.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=0001OR&topic_id=1 ³ http://redhanded.hobix.com/inspect/sparklinesForMinimalists.html
At 01:47 PM 7/31/2005, Tobias Wolf wrote:
Hey, what do you people actually think about E. Tufte's Sparklines? They are a great and innovative thing in my mind; both in the information mediating and the typographic sense. There's a bare-bones LaTeX package on CTAN, but when I think about it, this technique could find a perfect place in ConTeXt's framework (say MetaPost, XML, Scripting and so on. There's even some kind of Ruby implementation).
(For those who haven't heard of the idea, it's basically a word-sized graphic that would go in a table or sentence, and provides an at-a-glance sense of the "meaning" of the data. For instance, on a table of stock values, one could include mini-graphs of the last month's prices for each, allowing one to immediately see which stocks were having big changes, or whether a particular stock's change was meaningful, or such. Read the links below for more details.) In my opinion, they seem like a useful idea for some things, though I think there's a temptation to try to pack too much information into one. There was quite an interesting pair of threads on Tufte's forums about them, here: http://www.edwardtufte.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=0001Eb http://www.edwardtufte.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=0001OR The particular temptation that I saw was that they _aren't_ a substitute for a full graph -- they're only a substitute for the information one gets at the first glance at a graph. In the thread, it seemed that some people were trying to put so much information in them that one would need to spend time studying them to read them, and that misses the point. Personally, I haven't yet written anything that seemed to provide a good use for them, so I'm sort of waiting to have a real opinion on them until I actually find a place to give them a proper try-out in a "real-world" situation. In any case, I do agree that MetaPost is probably one of the best ways to implement them, and ConTeXt's MetaPost integration should make it quite easy to organize such implementations. - Brooks
The particular temptation that I saw was that they _aren't_ a substitute for a full graph -- they're only a substitute for the information one gets were trying to put so much information in them that one would need to spend time studying them to read them, and that misses the point.
Personally, I haven't yet written anything that seemed to provide a good use for them, so I'm sort of waiting to have a real opinion on them until I actually find a place to give them a proper try-out in a "real-world" situation.
In any case, I do agree that MetaPost is probably one of the best ways to implement them, and ConTeXt's MetaPost integration should make it quite easy to organize such implementations.
To clarify, my question wasn't a request or anything. I see it in the same position as you, a toy used in exploration of some concepts that nonetheless seem to be based on some valid points. One of them being that the data and the text shouldn't be too disparate, floated far afield, and another that the content to presentation ratio should be maximal. These Sparklines cannot replace a full-blown figure but afford to approach data more in the sense of reading than in the sense of deciphering. I asked here because everything about it screamed ConTeXt (also considering that the favourite command here seems to be \input tufte). Thought this meme must have infected some here. - Tobias
Tobias Wolf wrote:
I asked here because everything about it screamed ConTeXt (also considering that the favourite command here seems to be \input tufte). Thought this meme must have infected some here.
-) i didn't know tufte had a site; seems that a new book is coming in 2006 how about a sparkline contest .. Hans ----------------------------------------------------------------- Hans Hagen | PRAGMA ADE Ridderstraat 27 | 8061 GH Hasselt | The Netherlands tel: 038 477 53 69 | fax: 038 477 53 74 | www.pragma-ade.com | www.pragma-pod.nl -----------------------------------------------------------------
Tobias Wolf wrote:
Hey, what do you people actually think about E. Tufte's Sparklines?² They are a great and innovative thing in my mind; both in the information mediating and the typographic sense.
Can you be a bit more specific? You mean small and/or condense inline graphics? (btw, a variant on such in line graphics can be found in "concrete mathematics" (dices) What kind of support is actaully needed? Hans ----------------------------------------------------------------- Hans Hagen | PRAGMA ADE Ridderstraat 27 | 8061 GH Hasselt | The Netherlands tel: 038 477 53 69 | fax: 038 477 53 74 | www.pragma-ade.com | www.pragma-pod.nl -----------------------------------------------------------------
participants (3)
-
Brooks Moses -
Hans Hagen -
Tobias Wolf