[topicmapmail] Plumb Visual Thesaurus Redesigned

[Thomas B. Passin]

[Steve Pepper]

> At 10:10 29.10.2002 +0100, Rath, Holger (empolis DA) wrote:
> >Concerning the graphical visualization of Plumb
> >Design, I have to say that it is - for sure - an
> >eye catcher. But it is not really easy and efficient
> >to use. I prefer the StarTree from inxight much more.
>
> It would be interesting to know what you believe those
> advantages are. So far I haven't been very impressed by
> StarTree (or any other graphic visualization of topic
> maps).
>

I do not think that these visualizations are the only way to show the data,
but they can be extremely helpful in varous situations.

> I wouldn't say that StarTree is any easier or more efficient
> to use than ThinkMap: They both satisfy the urge for what
> Erik Naggum used to call "instant visual gratification" ...
> and they both drive users bonkers after a very short time.
> (One person who used StarTree told me she felt "intense
> seasickness" after just a few minutes.)
>

The movement of the Plumb system can be stopped by changing a setting (not
on this demo, though).  However, the things of more interest to me were not
so much the graph layout display, although it seems to work well, but
these -

1) The way similar associations were related using dashed lines and popup
descriptions.

2) The way you could select which types of associations existed and should
be shown.

3) The way the descriptions were displayed in the right panel, where
clicking on them changed the focus of the map.

4) The way the browsing history was presented and used (which also partially
addresses one of Steve's points).

These features go well beyond the surface slickness, and provide much of the
potential value.

> I think more work needs to be done on algorithms for
> reducing the complexity of a topic map before it makes
> sense to try and visualize it graphically, otherwise the
> result is unusable.
>

Yes,  and measures of similarity or distance can be really difficult.

[Holger, from a different post in this thread]

> It looks like that WordNet from Princeton Univ.
> is the source for this. So the Plumb Design
> people "just" adopted their visualization tool
> to the data source. BTW: WordNet can be easily
> converted into XTM. Maybe someone from the TM
> community has already done that?

I thought it was probably Wordnet, too.  Wordnet has been converted to RDF
form (I forget by who, I am sorry to say), so any of you have who has an
RDF-to-topic map tool can have fun here.

Cheers,

Tom P