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On the Visualization of Hierarchical Relations and Tree Structures with TagSpheres

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Computer Vision, Imaging and Computer Graphics Theory and Applications (VISIGRAPP 2016)

Part of the book series: Communications in Computer and Information Science ((CCIS,volume 693))

Abstract

Tag clouds are widely applied, popular visualization techniques as they illustrate summaries of textual data in an intuitive, lucid manner. Many layout algorithms for tag clouds have been developed in the recent years, but none of these approaches is designed to reflect the notion of hierarchical distance. For that purpose, we introduce a novel tag cloud layout called TagSpheres. By arranging tags on various hierarchy levels and applying appropriate colors, the importance of individual tags to the observed topic gets assessable. To explore relationships among various hierarchy levels, we aim to place related tags closely. Various usage scenarios from the digital humanities, sports, aviation and natural disaster management point out the benefit of TagSpheres for different domains. In addition, we highlight that TagSpheres is also a novel layout approach for tree structures.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    http://www.wordle.net/.

  2. 2.

    http://tagspheres.vizcovery.org.

  3. 3.

    http://exchange-projekt.de/.

  4. 4.

    http://openflights.org/data.html.

  5. 5.

    http://www.iata.org/services/pages/codes.aspx.

  6. 6.

    https://www.google.com/flights/.

  7. 7.

    http://www.worldriskreport.org/.

  8. 8.

    http://tinyurl.com/htkw8h8.

  9. 9.

    Bible genealogy data taken from BibleFamilyTree.info, Copyright © 2013 by The Psalm 119 Foundation. Used by permission. (http://www.ThePsalm119Foundation.org).

  10. 10.

    http://biblefamilytree.info/.

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Acknowledgements

The authors thank Judith Blumenstein for preparing the digital humanities use cases. This research was funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Image and Signal Processing Group, Leipzig University, Leipzig, Germany

    Stefan Jänicke & Gerik Scheuermann

Authors
  1. Stefan Jänicke
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  2. Gerik Scheuermann
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Stefan Jänicke .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Escola Superior de Tecnologia do IPS, Setúbal, Portugal

    José Braz

  2. MiraLab, University of Geneva, Carouge, Switzerland

    Nadia Magnenat-Thalmann

  3. LISA - ISTIA, University of Angers, Angers, France

    Paul Richard

  4. Department of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering, Jacobs University, Bremen, Germany

    Lars Linsen

  5. University of Groningen, Groningen, The Netherlands

    Alexandru Telea

  6. Università di Catania, Catania, Italy

    Sebastiano Battiato

  7. Research Innovation Center, Canon U.S.A. Inc., San Jose, California, USA

    Francisco Imai

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Jänicke, S., Scheuermann, G. (2017). On the Visualization of Hierarchical Relations and Tree Structures with TagSpheres. In: Braz, J., et al. Computer Vision, Imaging and Computer Graphics Theory and Applications. VISIGRAPP 2016. Communications in Computer and Information Science, vol 693. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-64870-5_10

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-64870-5_10

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