Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
4.2 A Temporal Information Tool (HuTime: Humanities Time)
HuTime is an innovative temporal information tool that can handle events on layers
spanned by the subject axis and the temporal axis (i.e., subject calendars) in Figure 2.
In the same way as HuMap overlays and visualizes maps and images by referencing
positions, HuTime arranges calendars, documents, graphs, and images by referencing
time lines. Users can easily grasp temporal relations and/or patterns of events from
different calendars by time. Although there are some temporal tools such as SIMILE
Timeline [18], these tools primarily focus on data visualization. The strength of
HuTime is that it can carry out basic temporal operations. Functions of HuTime are
summarized as follows.
Basic Viewer Functions
x Arrange/display various data by time
x Use calendars whose calendar systems are different simultaneously
x Multi-format: CSV, XML metadata, JPEG, GIF etc.
x Layer selection, change layer order, create new layers, delete layers etc.
x Change symbol/color/size/α-value of an event
x Zoom-in/out by time
x Import/export layer data
x Web-link
Functions as a Temporal Tool
x Link with data clearing house (under construction)
x Retrieve data by time and subjects
x Search/filter functions to select specific events on a layer
x Logical operations between layers
x Analyze periodicity, causal relation etc (under consideration)
Figure 6 shows example displays of HuTime. A typical view of HuTime is shown in
(a). This view consists of a wind velocities layer (dots graph), a precipitation layer
(dots graph), articles about natural disasters layer (document) and a Japanese calendar
layer. We can see the relationships between winds, rainfalls and disasters. Temporal
queries are the basic function of HuTime to extract objects occurred within a
designated period and/or matched with specific conditions (b).
(a) (b)
Fig. 6. Example Displays of HuTime: (a) is a typical view of HuTime, (b) is an example view
of a temporal query
Search WWH ::




Custom Search