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by tixzdk 3934 days ago
Seems like another kitchen sink library to me... Demos are impressive, but when is someone going to write a JS viz library in a more declarative fashion like outlined in Grammar of Graphics? They all seem overly imperative (draw this pixel, then that pixel) or rigid, non-composable functions taking huge configuration JSON blobs.
2 comments

>"Google Play - Read The Grammar of Graphics for $103.41"

I wonder what negative impacts textbook pricing has on software development.

If I was going to start a graphics library as a non-profit side project, that'd be a big barrier.

I agree it's a barrier to have such crazy prices, but there are free resources available, especially on a topic as popular as Grammar of Graphics. Hadley Wickham (in my mind, synonymous with the concept, since he implemented Wilkinson's ideas in R's ggplot package), for instance, has numerous materials on it, including a short primer (http://vita.had.co.nz/papers/layered-grammar.pdf). It might not be as exhaustive as the Wilkinson text, but surely there's enough material out there to implement GG in JS, especially considering there's successful implementations in other languages?
Do you know Vega[1]? I'm also a fan of declarative frameworks, and I was amazed by how easy it is to make a custom chart or map.

  [1] https://trifacta.github.io/vega/