From gershomb at gmail.com  Sun Feb 15 20:09:50 2015
From: gershomb at gmail.com (Gershom B)
Date: Sun, 15 Feb 2015 15:09:50 -0500
Subject: [Numeric] Welcome to the Numeric Haskell List
Message-ID: <etPan.54e0fd1d.19495cff.1218@mbp.local>

Frist Post!

(sorry/notsorry)

?gershom

From dominic at steinitz.org  Tue Feb 17 17:41:41 2015
From: dominic at steinitz.org (Dominic Steinitz)
Date: Tue, 17 Feb 2015 17:41:41 +0000
Subject: [Numeric] ggplot for Haskell (was Re: [diagrams] Using charts in
	blogliteratelyd)
In-Reply-To: <87mw4dbe2v.fsf@Chladni.home>
References: <25866f6f-4438-45a7-91ed-8e8eea9c3dec@googlegroups.com>
 <87mw4dbe2v.fsf@Chladni.home>
Message-ID: <A8880F7F-542B-423B-9F53-4F193DDBB23A@steinitz.org>

Hi Daniel,

Thanks for your comprehensive reply.

> I don't feel like I understand the design space enough to start such a
> project, but I'd contribute if someone gets it started, or I'd discuss
> it more first.

I am pretty sure I don't understand the design space either.

> Can you say a bit about what a library needs to be "like ggplot",
> rather than like other graphing libraries?  Is it mostly about
> separating the graph description from the data, and composable
> abstractions for the graph to support things like faceting?

I think we can already do faceting e.g.

https://idontgetoutmuch.files.wordpress.com/2014/06/044408c77f048f73.png?w=1560

I had a quick look at

http://byrneslab.net/classes/biol607/readings/wickham_layered-grammar.pdf

I may have misunderstood but I think it has a limited scope and
calling it a grammar of graphics suggests in can do more than it
actually can. That is not to be critical: it is very powerful just not
as powerful as the name suggests.

What I wanted to draw was something like this:

http://www.helsinki.fi/varieng/series/volumes/07/siirtola_et_al/figures/sfigure12.png

but that uses a package called Beanplot
(http://www.jstatsoft.org/v28/c01/paper) not ggplot.

I actually managed to sketch something that was close to what I wanted
using diagrams (not chart).

http://i.imgur.com/TeyloXA.png

So I feel we are quite close to something that is more powerful than
ggplot. But my attempts both at the above and at facets are not very
flexible / re-usable.

However, I feel I am re-inventing the charts wheel. What I feel I need
is access to the chart components not to just be able to create a
chart. Maybe we should talk directly to the author of charts.

I don't think it is possible to create the above example using
charts. A further thing one can't do with charts is annotations. I
believe one can do this in ggplot.

I think as you suggest, we need composable abstractions. For my
example, I created a grid and overlaid the histograms on top of
it. I'd like to overlay axes on it as well and a legend.

> I've used Chart (in Haskell) and ggplot a little, but mostly have
> experience with Python using matplotlib & pandas.  The last time I
> looked at making an R / pandas environment in Haskell, I got bogged
> down in picking a dataframe type.  tables[1] & Frames[2] both look
> relevant.

I've used frames and pandas a bit. As far as I understand it they
carry around a description of the data along with the data; ggplot can
then make use of this. I don't see it as essential and I wouldn't want
"ggplot in Haskell" to depend on either tables or frames

Maybe we could start "ggplot in Haskell" by somehow generalizing my
feeble examples?

Dominic Steinitz
dominic at steinitz.org
http://idontgetoutmuch.wordpress.com

On 17 Feb 2015, at 00:02, Daniel Bergey <bergey at teallabs.org> wrote:

> On 2015-02-16 at 09:15, idontgetoutmuch <idontgetoutmuch at googlemail.com> wrote:
>>   2. Why does haskell-chart load fonts but diagrams itself doesn't? Does 
>>   diagrams generate fonts on the fly somehow?
> 
> The answer depends on which Diagrams Backend you are using.  Backends
> which output raster images load the fonts they use.  Vector output
> formats may get away refering to the font name, and expecting the viewer
> to load the font.  Some vector backends can access font metrics to
> position (eg, center) text.
> 
> I may be wrong about some of the following table:
> 
> | Backend    | Embed Font / bitmap      | Font Metrics |
> |------------+--------------------------+--------------|
> | Cairo      | depends on output format | Y            |
> | SVG        | N                        | partial      |
> | Rasterific | Y                        | partial      |
> | Canvas     | N                        | partial      |
> 
> I believe Chart loads fonts to provide better text positioning than the
> Diagrams Backends currently support.  I think there's some low-hanging
> fruit, here, notably
> https://github.com/diagrams/diagrams-rasterific/issues/21
> now that Rasterific has the needed feature.
> 
>>   3. Has anyone shown any interest in writing something like ggplot using 
>>   diagrams? This would be a fantastic tool but wouldn't be a trivial 
>>   undertaking.
> 
> Quite a few people have expressed interest in *using* such a library.  I
> haven't heard anyone say they have time to write it, but maybe between
> us we do.
> 
> I don't feel like I understand the design space enough to start such a
> project, but I'd contribute if someone gets it started, or I'd discuss
> it more first.
> 
> Can you say a bit about what a library needs to be "like ggplot", rather
> than like other graphing libraries?  Is it mostly about separating the
> graph description from the data, and composable abstractions for the
> graph to support things like faceting?
> 
> I've used Chart (in Haskell) and ggplot a little, but mostly have
> experience with Python using matplotlib & pandas.  The last time I
> looked at making an R / pandas environment in Haskell, I got bogged down
> in picking a dataframe type.  tables[1] & Frames[2] both look relevant.
> 
> cheers,
> bergey
> 
> Footnotes: 
> [1]  http://hackage.haskell.org/package/tables
> 
> [2]  https://github.com/acowley/Frames
> 


From dominic at steinitz.org  Mon Feb 23 20:07:44 2015
From: dominic at steinitz.org (Dominic Steinitz)
Date: Mon, 23 Feb 2015 20:07:44 +0000
Subject: [Numeric] ggplot for Haskell (was Re: [diagrams] Using charts
	in blogliteratelyd)
In-Reply-To: <87zj84tyo8.fsf@Chladni.home>
References: <25866f6f-4438-45a7-91ed-8e8eea9c3dec@googlegroups.com>
 <87mw4dbe2v.fsf@Chladni.home>
 <A8880F7F-542B-423B-9F53-4F193DDBB23A@steinitz.org>
 <87zj84tyo8.fsf@Chladni.home>
Message-ID: <ABEB6D60-0704-4671-B3D9-961CC196FFDB@steinitz.org>


Dominic Steinitz
dominic at steinitz.org
http://idontgetoutmuch.wordpress.com

On 23 Feb 2015, at 15:50, Daniel Bergey <bergey at teallabs.org> wrote:

> On 2015-02-17 at 17:41, Dominic Steinitz <dominic at steinitz.org> wrote:
>> I think we can already do faceting e.g.
>> 
>> https://idontgetoutmuch.files.wordpress.com/2014/06/044408c77f048f73.png?w=1560
>> http://www.helsinki.fi/varieng/series/volumes/07/siirtola_et_al/figures/sfigure12.png
> 
> How does Chart handle axes bounds when faceting?  This is an example
> where I believe ggplot outshines matplotlib.  matplotlib does a good job
> picking axes bounds & tickmarks for a single plot, but if I make two
> subplots, it picks bounds separately for each.  To get them aligned on
> one or both axes, I need to specify bounds myself.  ggplot by default
> plots each subplot with matching bounds on the matching axes.

I should have been clearer - my apologies. chart does *not* do faceting; I transform multiple charts into diagrams and then lay these out in whatever way is appropriate. I can create each chart with identical axes and so get the ggplot experience.

> 
>> but that uses a package called Beanplot
>> (http://www.jstatsoft.org/v28/c01/paper) not ggplot.
> 
> That's a cool graph.  I've seen symmetric "violin plots" before, with
> the same univariate distribution plotted on each side of the vertical
> whiskers.  I think I prefer this version, with a different category on
> each side.

I think to do something like this I need to be able to access the components of a chart and be able to create new sorts of components; I don?t believe the former is possible at the moment although I think the latter is (I recall someone just submitted a pull request to produce histograms).