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Hi Hacker News! One of the Vega-Lite authors here. I'm excited to see you all here checking out our declarative visualization system. If you want to learn more

Hi Hacker News! One of the Vega-Lite authors here. I'm excited to see you all here checking out our declarative visualization system. If you want to learn more about the academic origins, check out the paper: https://idl.cs.washington.edu/papers/vega-lite https://idl.cs.washington.edu/papers/vega-lite. Vega-Lite is also available as the default plotting library in JupyterLab. If you like, also check out Altair (https://github.com/altair-viz/altair https://github.com/altair-viz/altair), a Python API for generating Vega-Lite and Vega-Lite-API (https://observablehq.com/@uwdata/introduction-to-vega-lite https://observablehq.com/@uwdata/introduction-to-vega-lite), a JavaScript API to generate Vega-Lite.

deleted 6y ago
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pletnes 6y ago
I’d just like to say thanks for working on vega-lite. I haven’t used it much, but it will change the world to a slightly better place. Dear sw devs who are doing visualization: please do have a look at vega-lite, even if you can’t use it for $PROJECT for $REASON, you can learn so much about visualization by reading the docs and playing with the online editor. The separation of concerns was an eye opener for me.
pbowyer 6y ago
I'd like to second the thanks; Vega-Lite is awesome. I've two pieces of feedback. The first is I started by using Vega-Lite-API thinking it would be easier to understand. As I tried to do what I needed I found most examples in the manual are JSON only, and the JS API docs weren't helpful. It took a while to work out how to make a log-scale axis, or how to customise the tooltip content (I could see in the JSON how to do it easily) and I gave up trying to work out how to provide a custom colour scale via JS - or to change to another pre-defined one. The second is around toggling on/off the data in the chart. I had ~20 series on one scatter plot, and being able to highlight other members of a series, or turn series on/off would make it easier to explore the data. I found a JSON example of doing this; but not one with the JS-API. It was also more complicated than I hoped, wanting to use Vega-Lite as a better Excel to explore this data, and not to write my own chart-app if that makes sense (different purpose).
stevesycombacct 6y ago
As an Altair fan, I'm interested in your plans for future versions, if you're free to discuss those. While composing this question I was about to ask if you support VS Code, but I see[0] that you do now. I was also about to ask if you support disabling the 5,000-row limit, but I see[1] that you do that now, too. So, clearly, you're doing great things with Altair. [0]https://altair-viz.github.io/user_guide/display_frontends.html https://altair-viz.github.io/user_guide/display_frontends.ht... [1]https://altair-viz.github.io/user_guide/faq.html https://altair-viz.github.io/user_guide/faq.html
wodenokoto 6y ago
> Vega-Lite is also available as the default plotting library in JupyterLab. What does that mean? I thought plotting was done by what-ever program script was running on the kernel.
- domoritz 6y ago
  JupyterLab outputs have a mime type. Depending on the mimetype, a different renderer is used. For example, text is shown as plain text and an image is binary with the image type (e.g. png). There is also a mimetype for Vega and Vega-Lite JSON. What this means for you as a user is that you don't need to install the renderer as it comes with the JL frontend. Vega-Lite is client side so it's not running in the kernel.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

pletnes 6y ago

I’d just like to say thanks for working on vega-lite. I haven’t used it much, but it will change the world to a slightly better place. Dear sw devs who are doing visualization: please do have a look at vega-lite, even if you can’t use it for $PROJECT for $REASON, you can learn so much about visualization by reading the docs and playing with the online editor. The separation of concerns was an eye opener for me.

pbowyer 6y ago

I'd like to second the thanks; Vega-Lite is awesome. I've two pieces of feedback. The first is I started by using Vega-Lite-API thinking it would be easier to understand. As I tried to do what I needed I found most examples in the manual are JSON only, and the JS API docs weren't helpful. It took a while to work out how to make a log-scale axis, or how to customise the tooltip content (I could see in the JSON how to do it easily) and I gave up trying to work out how to provide a custom colour scale via JS - or to change to another pre-defined one. The second is around toggling on/off the data in the chart. I had ~20 series on one scatter plot, and being able to highlight other members of a series, or turn series on/off would make it easier to explore the data. I found a JSON example of doing this; but not one with the JS-API. It was also more complicated than I hoped, wanting to use Vega-Lite as a better Excel to explore this data, and not to write my own chart-app if that makes sense (different purpose).

stevesycombacct 6y ago

As an Altair fan, I'm interested in your plans for future versions, if you're free to discuss those. While composing this question I was about to ask if you support VS Code, but I see[0] that you do now. I was also about to ask if you support disabling the 5,000-row limit, but I see[1] that you do that now, too. So, clearly, you're doing great things with Altair. [0]https://altair-viz.github.io/user_guide/display_frontends.html https://altair-viz.github.io/user_guide/display_frontends.ht... [1]https://altair-viz.github.io/user_guide/faq.html https://altair-viz.github.io/user_guide/faq.html

wodenokoto 6y ago

> Vega-Lite is also available as the default plotting library in JupyterLab. What does that mean? I thought plotting was done by what-ever program script was running on the kernel.

domoritz 6y ago
JupyterLab outputs have a mime type. Depending on the mimetype, a different renderer is used. For example, text is shown as plain text and an image is binary with the image type (e.g. png). There is also a mimetype for Vega and Vega-Lite JSON. What this means for you as a user is that you don't need to install the renderer as it comes with the JL frontend. Vega-Lite is client side so it's not running in the kernel.