
Gephi - The Open Graph Viz Platform - ash
http://gephi.org/
======
jcdreads
Naive question: is "graph viz" a term of art that happens to be easily
confusable with "GraphViz", the graph rendering software?

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Groxx
It appears to be, as this doesn't seem to import any GraphViz file formats
natively (sadly). From the user manual, it does sound like there's a plugin to
handle them, though it's a bit ambiguous, so it may just be as an example of a
possible plugin.

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mbastian
I'm Gephi main dev. Supporting DOT file format is in our roadmap and will be
done very soon.

~~~
mnemonicsloth
Have you thought about bundling some canonical example graphs and using it as
a teaching tool for graph theory?

(I'm already working on a similar project. Feel free to shoot me an email at
the address in my profile if you want to talk about it.)

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ableal
If you guys go into that, I'd suggest leaving a path open for TikZ (text to
embed pics in TeX, see here <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1204172> ,
about use in a graph theory book).

Makes neat print-style pictures - for example this chart:
<http://www.texample.net/tikz/examples/gajski-kuhn-y-chart/> , which is not a
graph; but the ones in the book looked good.

P.S. <http://www.texample.net/tikz/examples/prims-algorithm/> illustrates the
graph algorithm with overlays.

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Groxx
That looks _awesome_. Hard to believe it's open source & free. I'm definitely
hanging onto this site, thanks for the link!

edit: trying it on my Mac now, it runs quite well on some sample data (a
couple thousand nodes). The UI and a couple things reek of open-source-
projectitis, but overall it's quite good, with a couple display / coloring
bugs. Could use some more built-in displaying tools, as it's a little meagre
at first attempts, but that'll probably come with time.

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ableal
I have an interest in force-directed algorithms, and was going to ask about
the "Force Atlas algorithm" mentioned in the paper (PDF at
[http://www.aaai.org/ocs/index.php/ICWSM/09/paper/view/154/10...](http://www.aaai.org/ocs/index.php/ICWSM/09/paper/view/154/1009)
), but a cursory search found this recent explanation by the author:
<http://gephi.org/forum/topic.php?id=5403>

Neat looking site, congratulations and thanks to the authors. I'd suggest not
going too heavy on the slangy abbreviations (Viz, hi-quality). For me, adding
'Interactive' and removing 'Platform' would improve the headline.

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rman666
_Related question_: Anyone know of a software to display points in 3D space on
screen and allow the display to be rotated left, right, up, down, etc. (in
real-time using mouse or keyboard)? I need it to run on Windows or Linux
Ubuntu. Gephi looks awesome, but my data points are just 3D points, not a
network.

There used to be a program called MacSpin which was perfect for my needs, but
is no longer available (and I don't have a Mac).

Bonus if I can add values to change the size and color of the points, and/or
label them. Extra bonus if the software is Free and/or Open Source.

~~~
idm
If you can borrow a mac, Grapher is waiting for you. It's free with OSX, it's
current, and it easily handles a set of 3d coords. I highly recommend it.

~~~
ableal
I'll be ... yes, Grapher is tucked away in the Utilities folder under
Applications. Time to clean the dock of iChats and suchlike ...

(I've use of a Mac again for three months now, after a hiatus of many moons,
and had not noticed. Thanks.)

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ShabbyDoo
This seems like it would be a very cool front-end to Neo4j -- a graph-oriented
DB.

<http://neo4j.org/>

~~~
nawroth
You bet! The projects are just starting to collaborate, see:
[http://wiki.neo4j.org/content/Google_Summer_of_Code_for_Neo4...](http://wiki.neo4j.org/content/Google_Summer_of_Code_for_Neo4j_Visualization)

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melling
Built with the Netbeans Java IDE.

<http://netbeans.org>

~~~
ciudilo
I belive it is using NetBeans platform itself.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NetBeans#NetBeans_Platform>

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elblanco
This looks like excellent work.

Any chance on supporting other formats like spreadsheets, csv, or generic XML
schemas s.t. I can just specify a couple of xpaths as the node end points and
have it figure out how to draw the graph?

~~~
mbastian
Gephi supports CSV imput already and has some plans to make assistant plugins
to import data from other sources like Excel files, RDF or XML.

~~~
elblanco
Excellent. One of the problems I've always had with graph viz tools is the
need to cram my data into some predefined schema to make the tool work instead
of having the tool do that kind of stuff for me.

Been playing around with it for a bit. Amazing work for a beta release. The
"generate random network" option is fantastic. Some GUI bugs, like drag
doesn't seem to want to turn back on, but really great stuff.

~~~
mbastian
Yes there is a bug with drag. I just filled a bug report
<https://bugs.launchpad.net/gephi/+bug/546986>

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deutronium
One open source graph visualisation program I really like is Cytoscape which
is also Open Source and written in Java.

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d0m
ok, I've searched for a minute how to add a node and didn't found a way. So I
closed the app. Maybe in a future version, it will be possible to __easily
__add a node in an Open Graph Viz Platform.

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mbastian
I'm gephi main dev. That will be fixed with better documentation asap. You can
add nodes and edges by using "Node Pencil" and "Edge Pencil" tools in the
toolbar.

~~~
d0m
Quick suggestion: Instead of better documentation, I suggest you remove less-
used elements from the main screen and put more emphasis on the important
ones. For such an important feature (add a node), it should be trivially easy
to see how to do it.

Also, it could be great to have a project open by default when you first open
the application.. instead of the: file new project.

Oh, and everyone can down me, I don't care, I use a smurf account.
Constructive critism = down vote, while saying wow good job, is +5 karma. So,
I have 2 accounts: one to say wow, and one to say real important critismes.

Guess what, one is always around 0 karma while the other is high ranked.. what
a shame :)

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ableal
My guess is that your tone grated. This may help:

 _Moving parts in rubbing contact require lubrication to avoid excessive wear.
Honorifics and formal politeness provide lubrication where people rub
together. Often the very young, the untraveled, the naive, the unsophisticated
deplore these formalities as “empty,” “meaningless,” or “dishonest,” and scorn
to use them. No matter how “pure” their motives, they thereby throw sand into
machinery that does not work too well at best._

(Heinlein, filched here:
<http://www.angelfire.com/or/sociologyshop/lazlong.html>)

