[Haskell-cafe] GSoC Proposal: A 3d visualization of code (packages)

[Vo Minh Thu]

2011/4/4 Tillmann Vogt <Tillmann.Vogt at rwth-aachen.de>:
> Dear Haskell Programmers,
>
> To get some feedback on my proposal here is posting that explains it more
> detailed:
> http://tillmannvogt.wordpress.com/2011/03/30/gsoc/
>
> If this succeeds it could become the poster child application for WebGL and
> there will be an immediate value to all Haskell programmers: Get an overview
> what is happening. In the long term there is the possibility to have a very
> powerful UI-library and to be able to combine visualizations with Code.
>
> The milestone plan is just to show that it should be doable. The part that
> is not so clear how to do is the integration with hackage2. It could even be
> a separate site like haskellers.com that links to various resources. Should
> a WebGL engine be used (then it should be easy to load a collada file) or
> can WebGL be integrated in a haskell web framework?

Hi,

I'm happy to see someone interested in hacking 3D projects in Haskell.
But I'm failing at imagining your package visualization. Would it be
possible for you to craft some image with some real data from hackage,
and show how it would be more useful than, say, a normal web page?

Let me quote the three points from your blog:

    1. The visualization will let programmers quicker find a library
they need (see changes, etc. ), because the visualization algorithm is
like reversed pattern recognition to produce most recognizable shapes.
    2. The code size, popularity, dependencies, whatever the community
demands can be integrated or left away
    3. A general way to extend or change the visualization

I really think a more concrete (manually crafted) image would help a
lot seeing what you mean by 1.

I'm wondering how, in 1., it makes it quicker to find what I need if
it is not clear what kind of information it will provide. I say it is
not clear as point 2 is asking the question of what data is available
in the visualization.

Point 3 doesn't seem realistic to me. It sounds like a 3d
visualization framework is on the way, which is a big undertaking.

Cheers,
Thu