Graphics Reference
In-Depth Information
So what does all this mean? If you need to get a message out with the widest
reach, you should contact Schwartz and one of Duncan/Armstrong pair.
And, if you have a secret, it is likely safe to share it with Adkins.
Bundles, Shapes, Images, and More
You can manipulate many more visual attributes to enhance visual
aesthetics and/or add additional data. Each software package should
(hopefully) offer all the basic attributes previously discussed, but additional
attributes available can vary widely. The earlier e-mail examples in the
chapter were created with Gephi, but the following examples have been
created with other software.
Bundled Edges
An exciting attribute to emerge in recent years is
bundled edges
. These
are not quite the same as curved edges. The idea is to simplify the visual
depiction of the graph (particularly when it has many edges) by grouping
edges together (particularly when the edges are close to each other). This
could be considered perhaps an aesthetic attribute or a type of layout
attribute.
Figure 5-24
shows bundled edges for the e-mail example (created with
Cytoscape using the Bundle Edges feature). Note how the relationships
indicated by Broussard, Duncan, and Armstrong differ from
Figure 5-23
.
Previously, Duncan seemed to be the key link bridging between the middle
cluster to the right cluster. But with edge bundling, alternative paths
between middle and right clusters through Armstrong and Broussard are
now more visually apparent.
Shape
You can use shape to represent a few categories of data. Typically, you
will have a few shapes to pick from, such as a circle, square, or triangle
(for example, in Cytoscape).
Figure 5-25
shows the same Fortune 500
organizational chart as seen in
Figure 5-8
colored by job category, but now
with shape applied to indicate region (for example, squares indicate people
located in the European Union, and diamonds indicate people in North
America).
