So earlier I blogged about a Family Tree vertical. This vertical has been a catalyst for me finally getting round to creating a sort of TiddlyTagMindMap version 2, which I'm now calling VGraph.

TiddlyTagMindMap has been probably my most popular TiddlyWiki plugin but it's probably my most badly written and largest plugin. I was using a library to make it (Nicholas's JIT) and I found this library had lots of things I didn't necessarily care about. Since making this I've done a lot of work with canvas and vml, most notably in the construction of ILGA's new shiny data visualisation world map on http://new.ilga.org and the Vismo library that powers it. I've learnt a lot of lessons from this about making old Grandpa IE6 happier.

I have listened lots to the TiddlyWiki community and have got ideas about what people care about for a graph plugin - it needs to be configurable to a variety of needs, needs to work across different browsers and most importantly shouldn't lock them into a particular graph layout algorithm.


radial layout


hyperbolic layout


tree layout

I've created a generic graphing plugin called VGraphPlugin which I'm putting out there for feedback. The Family Tree vertical I blogged about earlier now uses it and this graph plugin unlike TiddlyTagMindMap is algorithm focused. I am keen on the idea of users adding their graph algorithms to suit the data they are presenting and being able to toggle between them quickly. For instance you can change the algorithm from a drop down in the bottom right corner and see a different graph in an instance. Many thanks to Nicholas's JIT by the way which saved me a lot of time writing complicated algorithms here.

I've also developed a concept of a labelMacro. It's still not perfected but I have made it so that you can add a parameter to my macro called labelMacro and it will render the label according to what that macro referenced says. So for instance the macro <> shows the tags of the tiddler calling it. In the graph you can do <> and the graph will render with node labels showing it's tags rather than title.


labels shown as created date field instead of titles

Have a play with this copy and let me know your initial thoughts... please bear in mind, there are still a few issues I need to iron out with cyclic graphs.. and of course one of the next steps is making this more interactive and explorable. Cheers!