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Graphics Software Science

Graphics in Science 93

Posted by Hemos from the making-tutfe-proud dept.
BishopBerkeley writes "Nature has an interesting nugget about the second meeting of the Image and Meaning Initiative which was held at the Getty Museum in Los Angeles. It is about the use of graphics in presenting scientific data. I am also a big advocate of using nice graphics in scientific presentations, but I also agree with Felice Franel, the founder of I-M, that not all images are meaningful scientifically. In fact, one encounters (and I am ashamed to admit that I have published) images that look nice but have no scientific import at all. One very cool Harvard physics professor, Eric Heller, produces wickedly beautiful (and meaningful) images of quantum mechanical models. These images have made the covers of Science and Nature, and are featured in his online art gallery, which was reviewed in the New York Times in 2002." And of course, any mention of graphic information should not go by without a big shout out to Edward Tufte.
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Graphics in Science

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  • Ever read Phi? (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Nature has symmetry everywhere. GUT of science and art.
    • Nature also has Asymetry every where. I actually think that asymetry is the rule, look at any pair of bOObs near you, they are symetrical only for the unexperienced eye.
      • Nature also has Asymetry every where. I actually think that asymetry is the rule, look at any pair of bOObs near you, they are symetrical only for the unexperienced eye.

        Please, use examples which are going to be familiar to the majority of the Slashdot audience.

  • Graphics in Science (Score:4, Funny)

    by Winckle ( 870180 ) <{ku.oc.elkcniw} {ta} {kram}> on Monday July 04, 2005 @08:35AM (#12979094) Homepage
    Fianlly, an excuse to buy that 7800 GTX!

  • The Secret (Score:1, Offtopic)

    by udderly ( 890305 )

    I know how they make these: it's with this! [etch-a-sketch.com]

  • Don't Forget The Cool Factor (Score:5, Informative)

    by DanielMarkham ( 765899 ) on Monday July 04, 2005 @08:36AM (#12979099) Homepage
    I've struggled with the same question as a computer consultant -- do images always convey anything useful just because they are based on scientific data? I've created a lot of really cool graphs and 3-D animations, but as far as analyzing the data, most times the computer is a lot better at processing multi-dimensional data than our old Mark-1 eyeball.
    But there is a cool factor involved with a lot of imaging. You can't deny that.
    Probably more disturbing is when images appear to convey data when they really don't. The use of false color is a great tool to bring out detail in astonomical images, but many times is misleading to the casual observer who may not understand that the images are "doped"

    Is BitTorrent Next? [whattofix.com]

    • Re:Don't Forget The Cool Factor (Score:5, Insightful)

      by luvirini ( 753157 ) on Monday July 04, 2005 @08:51AM (#12979166)
      Well.. complex data has to be broken down for a human to understand it.

      But still.. a human eye is an extremly good tool for spotting things.. a computer can only look for the specific things you tell it to look sofr whereas an eye and a mind of someone knowledgable, will often sense something in a way that no computer can.

      In most cases representing something gpahically makes that easier to grasp.

    • Re:Don't Forget The Cool Factor (Score:5, Interesting)

      by lars_stefan_axelsson ( 236283 ) on Monday July 04, 2005 @08:54AM (#12979180) Homepage
      I've struggled with the same question as a computer consultant -- do images always convey anything useful just because they are based on scientific data? I've created a lot of really cool graphs and 3-D animations, but as far as analyzing the data, most times the computer is a lot better at processing multi-dimensional data than our old Mark-1 eyeball

      Well, I've taken a slightly different tack in my research. While the computer might be better at actually analysing the data, visualisation can be a great tool in getting the results of that analysis to the user. In my case I've visualised [chalmers.se] the states of self learning intrusion detection systems so that the user can 'see for himself' why the system operates the way it does. Making under and overtraining and false alarms visible to an extent they weren't before.

      But I agree. Even though I started out (PDF) [chalmers.se] doing straight up visualisation, I've come to believe that it's the combination of computer analysis and visualisation to better match the capabilities of the human operator and the machine that's the interesting field to explore [chalmers.se].

      • Of course, I was not entirely innocent in posting this article. Eric Heller is a friend of my Ph.D. adviser, and he is also a very famous scientist (he famously formulted the "semi-classical approach to spectroscopy" [acs.org], see p. 368). He is a big advocate of visualization precisely because it can make getting the point across more easily. My claim to "fame" in visualization can be seen here [wavemetrics.com] and here [acs.org]. (Obviously, I like Igor Pro.) In the case of my own work, I like to think that the contrast in the nice 3-D surf
    • Check out the neat pictures at The Gallery of Fluid Mechanics [galleryoff...hanics.com].

      Just because I don't know what meaning a picture conveys doesn't make it nonscientific, does it?

  • Please make the story clear. (Score:5, Funny)

    by Black Parrot ( 19622 ) on Monday July 04, 2005 @08:38AM (#12979104)


    > not all images are meaningful scientifically. In fact, one encounters [...] images that look nice but have no scientific import at all

    Could you show that with a diagram or something?

  • Graphical information representation... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Krankheit ( 830769 ) on Monday July 04, 2005 @08:41AM (#12979113)
    Sometimes, it is easier to demonstrate with graphics, but a powerpoint presentation (or OOo presentation) with only a few words is not good either when demonstrating to more than a few people. Your information should be represented in many ways (graphical, text) because individuals learn things differently.
    • Krankheit says:

      a powerpoint presentation (or OOo presentation) with only a few words is not good either when demonstrating to more than a few people.

      IMHO, the main information of you presentation should be the words you say, only to be supported by your slides...

      not the other way around.

      If you put your entire presentation in your slides, then there is no need to listen to you.

      My apologies if this was not your intent with this statement, but I have seen quite a few presentations where the person prese

    • Powerpoint was previously explored [slashdot.org] on Slashdot.

      Of particular interest was this link [norvig.com] to a Powerpoint presentation of the Gettyburg address.

    • In my experience, people who can't read and analyze a reasonably well written document on a complex subject are dumb. Many of these people work in HR.

      I've never seen a PPP that was anything other than a huge waste of time. I think I might have seen my last, though.

  • Site slow (Score:3, Informative)

    by HG Slashdot ( 895363 ) on Monday July 04, 2005 @08:42AM (#12979114) Homepage
    Here are the mirrordot links:
    Nature has an interesting nugget [mirrordot.org]
    Image and Meaning Initiative [mirrordot.org]
    Eric Heller [mirrordot.org]
    online art gallery [mirrordot.org]
    New York Times [mirrordot.org]
    shout out to Edward Tufte [mirrordot.org]
    • The Web would be a lot better if a webmaster could implicitly mirror a remote page that's linked a page on their home server. I could add a link through a caching proxy, send a notice to the remote webmaster. The proxy could periodically send copies of its transaction log to the remote webmaster. Dropping the proxy from the loop, or just falloff of traffic through my link to zero, would stop the transmission of log info.

      All those steps could be automated. Perhaps an Apache module that lets an admin specify

  • Design Museum London (Score:4, Informative)

    by porlw ( 169848 ) on Monday July 04, 2005 @08:54AM (#12979183)
    The Design Museum in London has a whole section devoted to the presentation of information and the way bias can be introduced depending on the method selected.

    They have everything from pie-charts prepared by Florence Nightingale comparing the death rates in battle vs. the field hospitals to a graphical representation of the Linux Kernel.

    Well worth a look.
  • Why does this tufte guy get so much credit for so little, much of whih is either wrong or opinions on design, which, by definition, are subjective matters.
    once we stop kow towing to the tuftewrongs, we might get somewhere.

    • Re:who made this tuft guy czar (Score:5, Informative)

      by Knuckles ( 8964 ) <knuckles AT dantian DOT org> on Monday July 04, 2005 @09:15AM (#12979267)
      " Why does this tufte guy get so much credit (...)"

      Might have to do with the fact that he was a professor of statistics, graphic design, and political economy at Yale [wikipedia.org].

      so little

      Did you read his 3 main books on scientific graphics (The Visual Display of Quantitative Information; Envisioning Information; Visual Explanations)? They are very insightful books with a wealth of examples that are very inspiring.

      opinions on design (...) by definition are subjective matters

      Bull. This might be true if you talk about art, but we are not. You can easily do experiments that show that viewers have an easier time extracting information in a specific graphic design than in others.

      once we stop kow towing to the tuftewrongs, we might get somewhere

      Sure, but please show specific examples where he is wrong
      • You can easily do experiments that show that viewers have an easier time extracting information in a specific graphic design than in others.

        And just easily I can show that other viewers have an easier time extracting information in those other designs.

        • And I can find some guy in an asylumn who finds meaning only in dog shit, does that mean I have to make all my designs out of it?

          Get your head out of your ass, wil you? Of course the parent meant: most people and probably a vast majority. If you dispute those claims (which I assume are in the listed bnooks) then please do post these studies of your own, well?
        • Look at the bad examples in Tufte's books and his changes. Then show me that the bad ones were easier to read than his changed versions. Thanks
        • > And just easily I can show that other viewers have an easier time
          > extracting information in those other designs.

          No, you can't.

          How do I know that? Because you foolishly leaped to say the opposite of a very simple and non-controversial statement. Let's take a look at it:

          You can easily do experiments that show that viewers have an easier time extracting information in a specific graphic design than in others.

          Let's have one graphic design in the experiment be a standard set of histograms

          • The statement implied that there is one design that rules all, and everything else is wrong.

            You clearly understood what I meant that different viewers, different demographics and different people would be more comfortable in different designs. So stop nitpicking and being a jackass.

      • Edward Tufte hosts Pimp My Graphic.
      • Oh, I see, he has no data, but because he is an almight professor at yale, we kowtow to him.

        SHOW ME THE DATA: without data, it is just tufts opionion
        since you tufto-philiacs started this, i think the onus is on you to putup or shut up
        • Read the books for god's sake!
          • actually, it is quite amusing that the quality of the seminar should be given as evidence of tufts omniscence; since 325 clams is a lot of moola, one suspects a bias, in that those attending are inclinded to think positively of the man... ( I forget if this is called a type I or type II statistical error)
            I have read the books; what makes tufte amusing is that he takes some obvious clunkers, and skewers them; harmless fun, although correcting doltish authors and lazy editors is a sisyphean task. But he is no

    • Why does this tufte guy get so much credit for so little, much of whih is either wrong or opinions on design, which, by definition, are subjective matters.

      Judging from the spelling in your post, I'm guessing this is a troll but I'll bite anyhow. One of Tufte's messages is to maximize the data-ink ratio. One way of doing that is by doing "so little" as you put it. Many of the standard plot styles (e.g., bar chart) and be redesigned slightly by removing extraneous graphical elements to make the data rea

      • Tufte is a wonderful lecturer.

        He promotes himself aggressively.

        He picks on some sacred cows that need to be picked on, such Powerpoint. (It is alarming that business leaders believe it is reasonable to expect complex ideas to be explained in a few sentence fragments.)

        Tufte missed the boat on interactive computing - he's stuck on the printed page. Which is OK, but how are you reading this? I did notice in one of his latest talks that the sort of icons and tiny unreadable plots that would be bad if other
      • I actually know all this...who say maximizing data ink ratio is better ? show me some studies...
        oh..no studies, just tufts opinion
        (by the way, both the napolean march and the rail time tables he likes, are , if you read the books, and I did the 1st, not really the sort of thing tufte likes.
        he is like modern architecture: loudmouthed opinion without any real foundation
        I stand by my post

  • obligatory Soviet Russia (Score:4, Funny)

    by Krankheit ( 830769 ) on Monday July 04, 2005 @08:55AM (#12979186)
    In Soviet Russia scientific data presents powerpoint.

  • favourite toolkit? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by spectrokid ( 660550 ) on Monday July 04, 2005 @08:56AM (#12979193) Homepage
    What is your favourite open source cross-platform toolkit for making scientific graphs?

    • Re:favourite toolkit? (Score:4, Funny)

      by ghoti ( 60903 ) on Monday July 04, 2005 @09:03AM (#12979224) Homepage
      Excel
    • Adobe Illustrator - for line charts use the scatter chart instead - for the same reason you would use the scatter in excel - you have more control over the x and y axis plotting over time.

      You also have an easier time saving it as a picture file of high quality, either as an .eps or using photoshop. That way the people you send it to (or documents you place it into) cant screw it up. If you are stuck with excel - always "paste special-as a picture", never simply copy and paste.

      Its a bit tricky to use Ad

    • Re:favourite toolkit? (Score:4, Informative)

      by lunadog ( 821751 ) on Monday July 04, 2005 @10:17AM (#12979673)

      RLPlot [sourceforge.net] is really nice, working towards being the opensource SigmaPlot..

      ... It even does error bars on coloured bar charts! (not seen that in any other graphing program on Linux, not even gnuplot). It exports nice vector graphics charts that import into Lyx nicely.

    • Re:favourite toolkit? (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      ROOT [root.cern.ch] and VTK [kitware.com]

    • Re:favourite toolkit? (Score:4, Informative)

      by imsabbel ( 611519 ) on Monday July 04, 2005 @10:51AM (#12979868)
      gnuplot.

      Really. It took me a LONG time to come to this conclusion, mainly because it scared my away with the whole "file parsing" concept, but it has tons of features, high quality output, good TeX integration.

      • In my current lab, we were using matlab to do a lot of the plotting, but now I've switched to matplotlib, a python library. It's so nice to have a full language at your disposal, and drop into the graphics as a simple module when needed. Before, I used Sigmaplot a lot but now I appreciate the power of a programmable interface.

    • Re:favourite toolkit? (Score:3, Informative)

      by Coryoth ( 254751 )
      I have to add another vote for VTK [kitware.com]. It's not ideal for 2D plots, but then there are so many packages that can do a good job of those. If you have to do any complex data representation in 3 or more dimensions however VTK is amazing, both in it's ability to produce great looking interactive plots, and in its incredible flexibility in how you trnasform and represent your data. Nothing else I'v used comes close.

      Jedidiah.
    • Not really a toolkit, but if you need a more heavy weight data visualization tool, check out OpenDX [opendx.org].

    • Ploticus [sourceforge.net] is a versatile, free program, although more for presentation and business graphics than scientific plots.

      ChartDirector [advsofteng.com] is commercial software but it's cheap and the free version is a complete implimentation with an inobtrusive watermark.

    • I've been using Grace [weizmann.ac.il] for years to make my graphs for publications and presentations (and before that, I was using xmgr, its ancestor), which used to be more stable.

      For more 3D and eye-candy stuff, VTK+Python is great

      Finally, for my daily tasks, I use gnuplot a lot. Like another poster say, I may not be the most fanciest piece of software, but it does the job for me... Where I work, we were used to Matlab, but Mathworks (a truly rogue company if you ask me, but that's another subject) has decided to cha
    • As an astronomer/physicist, I have to vote for http://www.astro.princeton.edu/~rhl/sm/ [princeton.edu], which produces graphs which just look much nicer than anything gnuplot or Matlab will spit out (with similar sort of effort, although maybe SM has a slightly weirder scripting language). Not free or open source, but it is, uh, obtainable, if you know what I mean.
    • In the High Energy Physics (particle physics) world, people use ROOT [root.cern.ch] or its predecessor PAW. ROOT's not GPL but a proprietary free license. ROOT is all C++; it's totally object oriented with a bewildering feature list. You can make really pretty graphs with it, and it exports to postscript among other formats.

  • Changed my view of life (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I am about to start a course in Computation Biology and bought Fundamentals of Biochemistry (Voet) as some background reading. The maths leaves me cold and when an equation is rearranged I just can't grasp the significance of it.

    However, the graphics of 3D molecular structures that start off simple and then end up in a huge DNA helix just blow me away and I spent yesterday morning staring at them in wonder (more than I have ever studied a work of art). Somebody put a lot of effort into that and I now have
    • Thank you for your kind words. I do 3D med imaging and few realize all the work I put into making information look good - and at the same time keep it accurate and informative. My day is spent telling people over my shoulder "there is no 'look cool button' anywhere on the keyboard or the app"

      It's not acheived without real suffering...

      And Tufte is a god

  • Coloring the Universe (Score:5, Informative)

    by colonist ( 781404 ) on Monday July 04, 2005 @09:04AM (#12979226) Journal

    This reminds me of this issue [space.com]:

    From Hubble Space Telescope pictures to the vocabulary used to describe the stars, astronomers and the media are coloring our universe, and they've been doing it for decades. While not intended to deceive, the efforts can range from the overly subjective to the absurd.

    Slate explains [slate.com] that the raw images from space telescopes are colored with Photoshop before they are released to the public. The 'Pillars of Creation [pbs.org]' shows the difference that color makes. You can download the free Photoshop plug-in [spacetelescope.org] to color your own images.

  • Synthesis. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by torpor ( 458 ) <ibisum@@@gmail...com> on Monday July 04, 2005 @09:09AM (#12979248) Homepage Journal
    I have long lamented the lack of visual effort in interface design, specifically in the realm in which I currently work, musical synthesizers.

    One of the problems with synthesis today is that it is too scientific .. and I have concluded that one of the reasons we see waves of synth revivial occurring every few years is because that is how long it takes someone to 'grok' their synthesizer, and while we wait for that grok to occur, no use occurs.

    I recently made a commitment as a synth builder to attempt to enforce a few rules on myself; one of them is the "No Label Philosophy", which basically means that if a knob needs a label in order for the user to work out what it does when they turn it, then its a poor interface design, but if it doesn't, its a strong one.

    The question I have is, where are other examples of 'illustration pushing concept' in the slashdott'ers world today? Have you recently seen some examples of graphical/icon-based design being used to clearly communicate very high-order concepts to the end user? What are they? Anyone got any pointers to examples of superlative graphical interface function, where you know instinctively what is going to happen because the picture tells you so?
    • I have concluded that one of the reasons we see waves of synth revivial occurring every few years is because that is how long it takes someone to 'grok' their synthesizer

      At first read of that, I thought you were saying (more or less) "..it is not until synth players visually can see the waves produced by their synth, do they 'grok' their synthesizer."

      As a synth player myself, and a very visual person, this made me realise a visual display representing the wave (and envelope, etc) being produced would sig
      • I think many of the effects that sound good aren't obvious in a simple oscillogram - even simple things like reverb, chorus and stereo spread require some kind of processing to become apparent. I think listening is probably the simplest way to learn what effect different things do.

  • Understanding = images + contextual info (Score:4, Insightful)

    by G4from128k ( 686170 ) on Monday July 04, 2005 @09:15AM (#12979270)
    Graphics are especially prone to the problem of obscurity through insufficient context or shared knowledge. What is self-evident to the author, because they have worked for so long on the project, is often opaque to the viewer.

    The problem is most felt in dealing with non-specialists. For example, all microscopists will instantly recognize the implications of a given visual patterns of an osmium tetroxide stain [vt.edu] in an image. In contrast, other scientists, lay people, voters, politicians, PHBs, etc. need some grounding in what the image shows, how it differs from "normal" and what the image means. A few suggestions for improving the understandability of an image include:
    1. textual summary: text creates reinforcement/redundancy
    2. annotate the images: arrows, circled regions and call-outs help the viewer know what's important and what it is.
    3. legends: color images, especially, need a legend or textual explanation of the color scheme.
    4. supporting metadata: information such as subject, scale, time (relative to some event), etc. helps create meaningful context.
    5. contrasting image pairs: Image pairs or sequences help cue viewers to the significant features or establish a pattern. Showing before & after, normal vs. abnormal, enhanced vs. non-enhanced, overview vs. detail, plain vs. peanut, etc. helps explain what's what.
    A picture may be worth a thousand words, but if an image presenter wants the viewer to get the intended thousand words then a little extra annotation, metadata, and context can help.
  • I prefer an image or an example to an obscure equation. Some scientists like to show that they are "hot" by publishing long lists of equations even those in the field find hard to decypher. It is better to understand through examples than not to understand at all.

    proxi
    • Some scientists like to show that they are "hot" by publishing long lists of equations ...

      I have to take offense to that. I hardly think scientist publish long list of equations because they think its "hot". The equations need to be published so that when the time comes and someone wants to build on their work, then the formulism is their for the community.

    • Man, you can use an image to replace an explanation, maybe (but even this is not really true), a table of values I'm sure, but an equation ?! You can't be serious.I can only imagine of a few equations which can be illustrated with images. So, replaced by them ? Come on, you must be kidding. Especially if you're talking about obscure equations.

  • Graphics for Processing (Score:3, Informative)

    by cspring007 ( 705809 ) on Monday July 04, 2005 @09:55AM (#12979528) Homepage Journal
    I am a master's student in the geo-sciences and my thesis requires that i process and handle a tremendous amount of data
    Most of the data that i use is spatial: topography, bathymetry, salinity concentrations..
    Anyway, my point is that after i write some code to process the data
    (I am developing an ecological model that tracks subsidence of marshland based on a whole bunch of environmental and geophysical parameters)
    the best and easiest way for me to verify the output is reasonable is to draw a picture of it. I have spent probably 60% of my time writing software that displays the data in a graphical format.
    However, this is only to verify that my data is close to accurate.. like say everything looks like it should.
    You still can't beat some statistics for really checking the quality of the output.

    Also, after watching a large number of presentations on theses, scientific studies, etc.. i would say that 0.05% of those presenters know nothing more of scientifc graphing than pushing buttons in xcel and seeing the nice graphics that pop up.
    I mean, most of them dont even change the default graphic colors, so they are up there, talking about something and behind them is that crappy Xcel purple color.

  • Quaternions (Score:2, Interesting)

    by josefkk ( 846519 )
    Another example of scientific art is this [fleischfilm.com] very beautiful animation of some sort of fractal. (Note: Turn down sound volume prior to viewing.)
  • I agree that graphics in scientific presentation should convey meaningful information, but development of aesthetically pleasing presentation for its own sake [mangocats.com] can lead to better representations with scientific significance.

    It would be a shame if journal article authors never looked past the default MS Excel graphs for their presentation.

    • There's certainly something to be said about intriguing pictures, even if they don't represent a huge amount of data in and of themselves. At the very least they give the viewer a way of associating data with an image, which IMO is a great way of remembering information. If you have some extra time and bandwidth to kill, I suggest checking out Molecular Expressions [molecularexpressions.com].

  • check it out (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    i personally prefer opendx [opendx.org] for my scientific data, it's somewhat complex but can make great navegable visualizations.

  • Think simple and elegant. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Assassin bug ( 835070 ) on Monday July 04, 2005 @10:37AM (#12979798) Journal
    In my experience in science keeping graphics very simple is best. I usually hope to have the audience leave my presentations with three adjectives in mind when they critique it: simple, clean, and creative. Assuming that you have followed rules of grammar and your scientific method is sound, a simple yet innovative presentation can make a good memory. Your data will be well understood and remembered. I absolutely detest the obligatory sequence data slide that creeps into many science presentations. Surely a creative scientist will someday discover a better way to effectively communicate sequence data in a presentation. And, how many people are going to stand at your poster for 4 hours to hand-copy all of your sequence data?

  • Animated and 3D graphics (Score:3, Interesting)

    by ColorTheory ( 897257 ) <jworthey@st a r p o w e r.net> on Monday July 04, 2005 @10:41AM (#12979817) Homepage
    This page: http://www.jimworthey.com/jimtalk2004nov.html [jimworthey.com] is the graphics that I used for a talk last year. As you read through, you'll see 3D pictures and animated graphics. When you see a 3D graph with a border, that links to a VRML pic that you can zoom and rotate. For free VRML viewer see http://www.parallelgraphics.com/ [parallelgraphics.com] for example.

  • Absolutely Shameless Plug (Score:4, Informative)

    by durandal61 ( 705295 ) on Monday July 04, 2005 @10:49AM (#12979857) Homepage Journal
    I'm the author of an easy to use open source C++ library that helps bridge the gap between your science and a final high quality image, and I thought I might point it out, since it's relevant to the topic.

    PNGwriter was originally written with scientists in mind. The need to create an image from the result of a scientific computer simulation arises as a natural part of scientific programming. Getting the data out of the program and into a high quality image in an efficient way can sometimes be hard, especially if the user is not a very experienced programmer. The methods used can often be highly inefficient or too complex to be feasible.

    PNGwriter is a very easy to use open source graphics library that uses PNG as its output format. The interface has been designed to be as simple and intuitive as possible. It supports plotting and reading in the RGB (red, green, blue), HSV (hue, saturation, value/brightness) and CMYK (cyan, magenta, yellow, black) colour spaces, basic shapes, scaling, bilinear interpolation, full TrueType antialiased and rotated text support, bezier curves, opening existing PNG images and more. Documentation in English and Spanish. Runs under Linux, Unix, Mac OS X and Windows. Requires libpng and optionally FreeType2 for the text support.

    It has been packaged for or is a part of Debian (stable), Ubuntu, Arch and FreeBSD.

    The website is available in English, Spanish and (in summary form) in Japanese, and contains many examples, an online version of the PDF manual, a FAQ section and more.

    Take a look:

    http://pngwriter.sourceforge.net/ [sourceforge.net]

    Hope you find it useful!

  • SVG: Scalable (or Semantic) Vector Graphics (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Once upon a time..
    (A fairytale of magic pictures)
    --
    "A kind of HTML, the codingsystem used for the layout of webpages, but
    then for graphics". That's what SVG is about. SVG is an abbreviation of
    Scalable Vector Graphics and describes how something is to be presented.
    The thickness of the lines, the patterns to fill planes, color
    distribution, masks and filters for effects like smooth flows, and more.
    In August of this year a international conference on SVG is held in
    Enschede and Ruud Steltenpool# is one of the

  • diagrams for discrete process modeling (Score:3, Interesting)

    by rp ( 29053 ) on Monday July 04, 2005 @02:05PM (#12980861)
    As a programmer and sometimes teaching assistant I've been doing a lot of stuff with techniques to represent the structure of information (ER models, UML class diagrams, RDF, etc.) and of discrete processes (state machines, flow diagrams, Petri nets, UML activity diagrams, UML message sequence charts, etc.)

    Considering the popularity of such techniques I find it odd how little material I have encountered on their actual useability, compared to other forms of representation. There still appear to be hordes of professionals in the software industry who routinely dismiss diagram techniques as being useless, or worse, a tell-tale sign of a weak mind (as Dijkstra did), without feeling the slightest need to substantiate such sentiment with evidence of any kind. At the same time, none of the proponents of diagram techniques I have seen (speaking or in writing) make any serious useability arguments in favour. Clearly it's easy to draw up small examples on which a particular diagram technique does well, and other examples to discredit the same technique. But that is the full extent to which the matter seems to be dealt with, even among professional software design specialists, such as the designers of the UML.

    So what I have been reading, mostly between the lines, is that formulas are "too hard" while diagrams are "too easy". Well, on the whole there may be a grain of truth in this thought, but I'd like to see more details. Are there any serious studies on the useability for diagrams (vs. that of tables, or formulas, or other types of visualizations) for conveying information? Or is this whole subject really as trivial as everybody appears to believe?
  • I know what they're talking about. Quite a few times I have seen a very nice graphic of HIV infecting a cell or whatever, only to realise the DNA helix is going the wrong way.

  • The best tool for sharing the graphics after they are produced is http://depicto.com/ [depicto.com]

    Depicto is great. It lets you and other remote users interactively comment/edit/modify graphics. One of the best remote-office tools I've seen in a while.

    Disclaimer: I don't have any stake in Depicto but I am friends with the developer.

  • typo that matters (Score:1, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Incidentally, the summary gets the name wrong. It's not Felice Franel, but Felice Frankel. [mit.edu]

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