Show HN: Textures.js, SVG Patterns for Data Visualization

http://riccardoscalco.github.io/textures/

by ricsca • 11 years ago

404 61 11 years ago

riccardoscalco.github.io

radiodario• 11 years ago

this is awesome! excellent for monochrome.

paulliwali• 11 years ago

Wow, this is really sweet. Can't wait to use it in my next project.

BaconJuice• 11 years ago

Thank you for sharing this! Can't wait to use this soon :)

Slightly off topic but maybe some SVG expert can help me out with a quick question! Is there a way to identify and automatically recognize all numbers in an image.svg file?

ygra• 11 years ago

What kind of numbers? Those appearing alone in attributes, such as <rect width='10' height='5'/>? Those appearing in path or polygon data are more complicated, as the syntax allows whitespace, commas, etc. as separators, but they're not needed in some cases. E.g.

    M0-1.2.5-3

is perfectly valid (AFAIR, not sure about the decimal points now), but not really nice to parse or extract.

The main point would be what your use case is? If you just need to transform something, e.g. translate or scale a shape it's easier to put a group around it and apply a transform on that.

anoother• 11 years ago

This is lovely. When I see this, I don't think 'patterns', rather, 'hatches'.

Makes me wonder what the state of modern SVG is w.r.t. real-world units - something like this really makes SVG look useful for for technical drawing, but pixels are not the best unit to draw to...

hardmath123• 11 years ago

Hmm, an Asymptote to SVG renderer would be pretty useful for displaying mathematical diagrams on the web.

collyw• 11 years ago

Looks just like the old Mac before they got colour.

Hytosys• 11 years ago

Awesome for colorblind people! Looking forward to using this.

jweir3• 11 years ago

Shades of gray would work as well.

Also checkout http://colorbrewer2.org/

It has an option for creating color sets which are "colorblind safe."

OliverM• 11 years ago

This is lovely. I've hand-coded solutions before to show two variables by region simultaneously (e.g. voting patterns by socio-economic levels:http://imgur.com/ww1WV66). Colour and texture are nicely independent for showing this stuff.

degroote• 11 years ago

Great project, just needed such a texture for an app. Thanks!

matt4077• 11 years ago

Loving the retro look. But I'm not sure if patterns are as good as colors in communicating data. As soon as the data has even an ordinal scale, gradients or hues should work better.

detaro• 11 years ago

Patterns are useful if it is intended to be printed (or for other b/w media). For good color prints or screen usage I agree, colors often can do a better job.

ricsca8• 11 years ago

Textures and colors can be combined, for example if you need to select according two different group of categories/variables.

Normangorman• 11 years ago

Patterns are actually much better for colour-blind people like myself.

kenbellows• 11 years ago

You are probably right if the data you're representing is scaled, but this sort of solution is fantastic for categorical data. Also, see other comments re: accessibility for colorblindness. Not necessarily a silver bullet, but possibly a solid solution in some circumstances.

Fiahil• 11 years ago

Very good attention to details! (like the position of circle patterns on edges of shapes)

Have a star, you deserve it :)

kenrick95• 11 years ago

Very beautiful :D

b4x• 11 years ago

Lovely. Style from Italy.

neumann2• 11 years ago

very nice. One tangential question, the example svg maps are not created in the browser. How are these typically created?

When I make SVGs they are typically either plots made with a plotting tool, or paths created from tracing or done purely by hand.

ricsca8• 11 years ago

I did it with d3.js and topojson, then I used the resulting svg image on the website. You can find the code here https://github.com/riccardoscalco/textures/blob/gh-pages/map...

ncza2• 11 years ago

In my opinion the "right" way for static things. Keeps the browser from computing, no need for the original data and libs. Of course being able to inspec other people's d3 code is fun on the other hand.

neumann2• 11 years ago

Thanks for the update! I was unaware of the power of geoJSON (also githubs neat mapping of them) and access to data from places such as gadm.org. Is that where you source the data?

ricsca8• 11 years ago

Many thanks for the good words! I am happy you like it.

swah2• 11 years ago

I wish we could have written the documentation for my current project in the browser instead of LaTeX.

But the need to produce good PDFs killed the idea.

gearhart• 11 years ago

We've had good success with wkhtmltopdf

All of our invoices and reports are built for the web and then converted on the fly to pdfs and emailed out to clients who prefer them that way. You lose the interactivity, which is a shame for some d3 reports, and you have to be a little careful (design for page breaks, test it as if it's a slightly fickle browser that you have to support, ensure that everything is visible without requiring interaction) but it keeps all of your development within the same tool stack and gives you web versions of them all for free.

For reference, I ran it on the textures.js page and put the results here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B5BP6Na7GalZOXdWdlh6MElWTDQ...

It's pretty good.

reverius42• 11 years ago

Check out GitBook. They build from Markdown/HTML and can produce interactive HTML and/or PDF.

swah2• 11 years ago

Oh, I looked into it, but if you compare with LaTeX, its pretty simple, but we need references, and footnoes, and complex tables, so we would need an extended version, and preprocess it, and.. might as well use LaTeX.

ttty2• 11 years ago

I never like how they chain methods. A better way would be:

    texture({lines: true, heavier: true, stroke: 'red'})

Is easier to configure if you need reusable textures.

ricsca8• 11 years ago

Interesting point. I simply relied o this post of Mike Bostock http://bost.ocks.org/mike/chart/.

findjashua• 11 years ago

imho, if the operations are to be performed in a certain order, use chaining. Otherwise, passing a config object is much cleaner

wayfarer2s• 11 years ago

An initial config object would probably be ideal, and then you could have the chaining to supplement those values. You could have the initial method take in the config and use the values in that in place of the defaults. So

  textures.circles()
    .radius(4)
    .fill("transparent")
    .strokeWidth(2);

could initially be

  var circles = textures.circles({
    radius: 4,
    fill: "transparent",
    strokeWidth: 2 
  });

and later updated to be

  circles.strokeWidth( 1 );

Which works rather nicely especially when the config object is generated dynamically.

bkirwi• 11 years ago

Yeah, it makes sense to mimic the D3 style: the only thing worse than a bad convention is two conventions.

mbostock• 11 years ago

Aren’t these textures already reusable? The constructed texture object (the result of textures.lines(), e.g.) can be called on as many selections as you like to reuse it.

I feel it’s a matter of taste, but one practical reason I prefer chaining to configuration objects is that you get a runtime error when you misspell a property, rather than it being silently ignored.

ttty2• 11 years ago

Image you have an UI which talks to this. For example you have a button on/off. How would you do?

    var t = texture().lines().stroke('red')
    if(this.button.on) t= texture.heavier()

Compare the previous with this one.

    var t = texture({lines: true, heavier: this.button.on, stroke: 'red'})

I also hate the non standard constructor: this should be like this

    var texture = new Texture({lines: true, heavier: this.button.on, stroke: 'red'});

marxidad• 11 years ago

Isn't this what Tufte refers to as "chartjunk"?

jweir3• 11 years ago

Tufte points out 1 + 1 is 3 or more visually. The two lines create two elements, then the space is another, then the space on either is potentially another.

http://csarven.ca/one-plus-one-equals-three-or-more

These textures are noisy. There can be occasions to use textures, but these examples would work just as well with shades of gray.

ricsca8• 11 years ago

Interesting point of view. Choices of style apart, there are situations where textures are useful. Like for example the case faced by swayvil (see the comment), or when you need b/w printable images. Another good reference is "Semiology of Graphics" of Jacques Bertin, he has a good opinion about textures.

ncza2• 11 years ago

Tufte is not that omnipotent, did he even ever consider colorblindness? Hatches are awesome substitution for color.

jacobolus3• 11 years ago

Of course he did consider color blindness.

Tufte recommends Imhof’s book Cartographic Relief Presentation on the subject of choosing colors for data graphics, and I’d second the recommendation.

Or for something online, take a look at Cynthia Brewer’s work.

jacobolus3• 11 years ago

Yes. See http://www.edwardtufte.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=0...

swayvil• 11 years ago

That's so tasty. Like tomato soup for my eyeballs.

I encountered the same issue in my project : 2 levels of polygon-distinguishment. Made a set of 1 bit seamless textures.

http://glowinggreenhand.blogspot.com/2014/01/i-made-bunch-of...

ricsca8• 11 years ago

:D thanks! Very good point.

emehrkay• 11 years ago

Thanks for this. I need to learn SVG for something that I am working on now, this library looks like it has a great interface for me to learn from.

jwiley• 11 years ago

This is lovely, congrats to the author

bujatt• 11 years ago

beautiful!

dylanrw• 11 years ago

Masterful use of contrast and texture. Data vis can stand to have more of this.

ricsca8• 11 years ago

Wow! Thanks.

sairion• 11 years ago

It reminds me of Semiology of Graphics by Bertin. Nice work! I would like to work on React port, only if I have a spare time...

rcazangi• 11 years ago

Indeed, original and very useful. Exactly what I've been seeking... for some time.

pdknsk• 11 years ago

I just want to point out that many of the line textures can also be made with repeating-linear-gradient() from CSS, perhaps more efficiently so.

frik• 11 years ago

Reminds me of the AutoCAD patterns, back in school.

shiggerino• 11 years ago

For me, the patterns in HyperCard and MacPaint.

hackerews• 11 years ago

Incredibly well done.

bennstancil• 11 years ago

This is pretty cool. I made a really basic example, but in doing it, I could imagine playing around with having the colors or orientation change with the data as well. And it might make for cool transitions too. That obviously get way too complicated pretty quickly, but it'd be fun to see what you could come up with that might work.

https://modeanalytics.com/benn/reports/a4515d9b9024

jpatel3• 11 years ago

Wonderful! What are the best use case for using this patterns apart from geo graph representation?

mmf• 11 years ago

This library is fantastic. These patterns are essential in the production of print-ready and print-like contents.

With the high resolution screens available today these make for stunning graphical presentation.

Show HN: Textures.js, SVG Patterns for Data Visualization

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