JSOL: JavaScript Open-source Library for Grammar of Graphics

TL;DR

JSOL is an open-source JavaScript library that provides a high-level, customizable grammar for creating and validating complex data visualizations, enabling both known and novel graphical representations.

Contribution

It introduces a comprehensive, rule-based visualization grammar with a compiler for validation and customization, advancing the flexibility of data visualization in JavaScript.

Findings

Successfully validated various plot customizations

Demonstrated flexibility in scene creation

First version released circa 2016

Abstract

In this paper, we introduce the JavaScript Open-source Library (\libname), a high-level grammar for representing data in visualization graphs and plots. \libname~perspective on the grammar of graphics is unique; it provides state-of-art rules for encoding visual primitives that can be used to generate a known scene or to invent a new one. \libname~has ton rules developed specifically for data-munging, mapping, and visualization through many layers, such as algebra, scales, and geometries. Additionally, it has a compiler that incorporates and combines all rules specified by a user and put them in a flow to validate it as a visualization grammar and check its requisites. Users can customize scenes through a pipeline that either puts customized rules or comes with new ones. We evaluated \libname~on a multitude of plots to check rules specification of customizing a specific plot. Although the project is still under development and many enhancements are under construction, this paper describes the first developed version of \libname, circa 2016, where an open-source version of it is available. One immediate practical deployment for JSOl is to be integrated with the open-source version of the Data Visualization Platform (DVP) \citep{Yousef2019DVP-arxiv}