4 ms·

Gephi - The CDDL1/GPL3 Photoshop for graphs

51 points by j_s 15y ago

j_s 15y ago
I stumbled across this project today and was blown away by how highly polished the user experience is compared to the http://www.graphviz.org/ http://www.graphviz.org/ project.
- emmelaich 15y ago
  Are they comparable in functions? I'd like to get nicer looking results than graphviz, but it's not clear from the website whether gephi supports layout or even batch/command line input. It does however, have a graphviz plugin! https://gephi.org/plugins/graphviz-layout/ https://gephi.org/plugins/graphviz-layout/ Installing now, to poke around.
  - j_s 15y ago
    I'm just getting started with Gephi and look forward to hearing the results of your investigation. My impression was that Gephi has much more polished versions of a couple types of graphs.
    - emmelaich 15y ago
      I did find this, soon after posting. https://gephi.org/toolkit/ https://gephi.org/toolkit/ "The toolkit is just a single JAR that anyone could reuse in new Java applications and achieve tasks that can be done in Gephi automatically, from a command-line program for instance" Haven't installed it yet, but a work colleague is investigating this and a bunch of like products.
oscilloscope 15y ago
Gephi's an incredible project for making big node-link diagrams. It has a selection of layout algorithms and statistics you can apply to nodes and edges. I used it at a hackathon to visualize the Marvel Universe social graph: http://exposedata.com/marvel/ http://exposedata.com/marvel/
dfc 15y ago
"Update your distribution with the last official JRE packages (update 25+), don’t use OpenJDK." Doh! Is debian the only distribution that does not ship sun's jre?
- krakensden 15y ago
  None of them ship Oracle's JRE, and they haven't for a long time. The usual licensing mess.
julian37 15y ago
I've used Gephi before and it's awesome. I can highly recommend it if you need to visualize or explore graphs, especially very large graphs which it handles gracefully. That said, what's with the title for this submission -- how does the license matter much (seeing that most users are unlikely to redistribute it) and why the gratuitous Photoshop reference?
- j_s 15y ago
  Thanks for taking the time to critique my submission! I was excited to be able to share the project with the community since I had not seen it mentioned here before. I look forward to learning more about Gephi and plan to use it to simplify analysis of website analytics. I chose 'CDDL1/GPL3' as the most concise way to share the project's reasonable balance between 'free as in beer' and 'free as in freedom' with anyone who would already care enough to recognize the abbreviations. The recent license change is mentioned in the summary of the latest release on the front page and in the blog post: http://gephi.org/2011/gephi-0-8-beta-released/ http://gephi.org/2011/gephi-0-8-beta-released/ I felt 'The Open Graph Viz Platform' could be easily confused with http://graphviz.org http://graphviz.org and 'makes graphs handy' wasn't enough info, so I used the next prominent short description on the front page ('Like Photoshop for graphs'). Would you mind sharing the title you would recommend?
nullsub 15y ago
i love love love what they're doing with Gephi, especially the ability to generate a collaborative, web based graph UI. HOWEVER, a word to the wise: I've had a LOT of trouble saving and opening saved files. there's a few tickets open, but I haven't seen any progress. that's sortof a dealbreaker when it comes to doing professional work :/
- j_s 15y ago
  Thanks for the warning! I'm just getting started and hope to use it to help spot patterns in web analytics.
dryicerx 15y ago
http://zoom.it/Lxrz http://zoom.it/Lxrz This was a few months ago when I was playing with Gephi and decided to visualize the user interactions on the #startups IRC channel (graph layout in Gephi, rendered in Batik)

51 points by j_s 15y ago

j_s 15y ago

I stumbled across this project today and was blown away by how highly polished the user experience is compared to the http://www.graphviz.org/ http://www.graphviz.org/ project.

emmelaich 15y ago
Are they comparable in functions? I'd like to get nicer looking results than graphviz, but it's not clear from the website whether gephi supports layout or even batch/command line input. It does however, have a graphviz plugin! https://gephi.org/plugins/graphviz-layout/ https://gephi.org/plugins/graphviz-layout/ Installing now, to poke around.
- j_s 15y ago
  I'm just getting started with Gephi and look forward to hearing the results of your investigation. My impression was that Gephi has much more polished versions of a couple types of graphs.
  - emmelaich 15y ago
    I did find this, soon after posting. https://gephi.org/toolkit/ https://gephi.org/toolkit/ "The toolkit is just a single JAR that anyone could reuse in new Java applications and achieve tasks that can be done in Gephi automatically, from a command-line program for instance" Haven't installed it yet, but a work colleague is investigating this and a bunch of like products.

oscilloscope 15y ago

Gephi's an incredible project for making big node-link diagrams. It has a selection of layout algorithms and statistics you can apply to nodes and edges. I used it at a hackathon to visualize the Marvel Universe social graph: http://exposedata.com/marvel/ http://exposedata.com/marvel/

dfc 15y ago

"Update your distribution with the last official JRE packages (update 25+), don’t use OpenJDK." Doh! Is debian the only distribution that does not ship sun's jre?

krakensden 15y ago
None of them ship Oracle's JRE, and they haven't for a long time. The usual licensing mess.

julian37 15y ago

I've used Gephi before and it's awesome. I can highly recommend it if you need to visualize or explore graphs, especially very large graphs which it handles gracefully. That said, what's with the title for this submission -- how does the license matter much (seeing that most users are unlikely to redistribute it) and why the gratuitous Photoshop reference?

j_s 15y ago
Thanks for taking the time to critique my submission! I was excited to be able to share the project with the community since I had not seen it mentioned here before. I look forward to learning more about Gephi and plan to use it to simplify analysis of website analytics. I chose 'CDDL1/GPL3' as the most concise way to share the project's reasonable balance between 'free as in beer' and 'free as in freedom' with anyone who would already care enough to recognize the abbreviations. The recent license change is mentioned in the summary of the latest release on the front page and in the blog post: http://gephi.org/2011/gephi-0-8-beta-released/ http://gephi.org/2011/gephi-0-8-beta-released/ I felt 'The Open Graph Viz Platform' could be easily confused with http://graphviz.org http://graphviz.org and 'makes graphs handy' wasn't enough info, so I used the next prominent short description on the front page ('Like Photoshop for graphs'). Would you mind sharing the title you would recommend?

nullsub 15y ago

i love love love what they're doing with Gephi, especially the ability to generate a collaborative, web based graph UI. HOWEVER, a word to the wise: I've had a LOT of trouble saving and opening saved files. there's a few tickets open, but I haven't seen any progress. that's sortof a dealbreaker when it comes to doing professional work :/

j_s 15y ago
Thanks for the warning! I'm just getting started and hope to use it to help spot patterns in web analytics.

dryicerx 15y ago

http://zoom.it/Lxrz http://zoom.it/Lxrz This was a few months ago when I was playing with Gephi and decided to visualize the user interactions on the #startups IRC channel (graph layout in Gephi, rendered in Batik)