JRjrullmann·Feb 17, 2015Submission
Vegas: Declarative format for creating and saving visualization designs
1 points · Open discussiontrifacta
vega
Data & Databases2013–2015
trifacta / vega
vega
A visualization grammar. Moved to: https://github.com/vega/vega
10Distinct people
11Mentions
0Explicit recommenders
29GitHub stars
What to know before exploring
What it is
A visualization grammar. Moved to: https://github.com/vega/vega
GitHub
Where it is used
No documented product use has been verified yet.
What people are saying
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This week on Hacker News
Nov 7–Nov 14 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/14/2026, 3:56:07 PM UTC.
No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.
Mentions over time
HN mentions by month11 dated mentions
Observed mentions: 2013-04-02 17:19:47 UTC to 2015-02-17 19:49:08 UTC.
Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.
View mention counts and date ranges
| Period | Start (UTC) | End (exclusive, UTC) | Mentions | Submissions | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Apr 2013 | 2013-04-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2013-05-01 00:00:00 UTC | 4 | 2 | 2 |
| May 2013 | 2013-05-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2013-06-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Jun 2013 | 2013-06-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2013-07-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Jul 2013 | 2013-07-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2013-08-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Aug 2013 | 2013-08-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2013-09-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| Sep 2013 | 2013-09-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2013-10-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Oct 2013 | 2013-10-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2013-11-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Nov 2013 | 2013-11-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2013-12-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Dec 2013 | 2013-12-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2014-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| Jan 2014 | 2014-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2014-02-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Feb 2014 | 2014-02-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2014-03-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Mar 2014 | 2014-03-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2014-04-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| Apr 2014 | 2014-04-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2014-05-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| May 2014 | 2014-05-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2014-06-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Jun 2014 | 2014-06-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2014-07-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Jul 2014 | 2014-07-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2014-08-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Aug 2014 | 2014-08-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2014-09-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| Sep 2014 | 2014-09-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2014-10-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Oct 2014 | 2014-10-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2014-11-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| Nov 2014 | 2014-11-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2014-12-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| Dec 2014 | 2014-12-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Jan 2015 | 2015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2015-02-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Feb 2015 | 2015-02-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2015-03-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 1 | 0 |
What Hacker News says
11 sourcesI work on this project.
One crucial thing to make the GUI simpler than code is direct manipulation. Working with a graphics program, like Inkscape, for example, is much easier for most graphics tasks than writing raw SVGs.
For most tasks in Lyra, you can simply drag-and-drop elements onto the visualization to make it respond the way you want. In advanced cases, true, you do have to navigate menus and buttons. For many of those cases, rather than writing raw D3 code, there's the Vega project. Vega is a declarative format for describing visualizations using a JSON format. Lyra generates Vega specifications for rendering, which can then be modified manually.
Vega: https://github.com/trifacta/vega
In Lyra: An Interactive Visualization Design EnvironmentI think the OP meant D3.js and Vega [1]
[1] https://github.com/trifacta/vega/wiki/Vega-and-D3
In Data Visualization with JavaScriptI've used Mathbox some, and am still trying to get more familiar with it. Is MathBox 2 architecturally separate, or will the original Mathbox become a subset of MB2? I'll just keep plugging away at MB (the 1st).
The comparison to D3js seems apt. MathBox is -- somewhat -- a 3D version of what D3 does. But D3 takes a bring-your-own-data approach, whereas mathbox is more directly about defining the mathematical structures. Both are fairly low-level. Mathbox is more opinionated, maybe. Vega might be a more direct comparison [1].
[1]: https://github.com/trifacta/vega/wiki/Vega-and-D3
In MathBox 2This reminds me a lot of Vega (https://github.com/trifacta/vega), albeit using a HTML/CSS approach as opposed to a JSON one. By default, I'm excited for new ways to approach data visualization, since its a really exciting topic with no clear winners.
I was worried about the hefty price tag until I realized that it was free for non-commercial projects. Will definitely try and play around with it this weekend, as I imagine combining this with basic Python templating could be an even stronger dataviz REPL than mpld3 or vincent.
In VarianceAlexandros,
I think you're missing a lot of the core concepts around visualisation. d3 aside (for now) you need to consider what visualisation is. Your focus is on charts alone will prevent this from getting any traction. d3 is a framework but it is also in a way, a visualisation kernel. This means that it gives the individual flexibility to create and design interactive information visualisations without being hindered by whatever is enforced by some charting library (only limited by the DOM or whatever scene graph it is working with).
d3 can also be viewed as an extension of the concept of 'grammar of graphics' (for a reference implementation of the grammar of graphics see vega (http://trifacta.github.io/vega) or ggplot2).
If you're plan around this is to build a system in which angular handles a lot of the data binding work, I would re
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commend re-implementing something like vega in angular. Because this would be more compelling than creating yet another charting library that is just built using some combination of d3's data manipulation and angular DOM style. nvd3.js, chart.js, yui-chart, etc. all run into this point where the libraries are simple tools for developers to use but do not have the extensibility of a framework like d3 that allows more freedom in the design.
Now lets say you create a competitor to vega, the key differentiator would be animation, assuming transitions are trivial as you've explained in this post, I have very minimal experience aside slides and videos in angular to comment. While vega will have: canvas scene graph support, potential to build on top of systems like WebGL, native iOS, or native Android. You will then be tasked to figure out the 'grammar of interactions' (https://github.com/trifacta/vega/issues/28) in order to allow attributes to differentiate yourself from vega which is going to be a very hard (but fun!) task.
Aside: d3's line function isn't refreshed as new data is inputed (meaning that you would either have to do this inside of some custom directive (towards the vega style implementation) or do some hack-ish 'tick' style system (the reason force directed is being updated is due to the fact that it has it's own very small physics model which you are leveraging on tick, (also 'ticks' do not harness angular's or d3's data binding concept well))).
I do think there is space for a true competitor to d3.js that takes a more OOP and stateful approach (what the root of your annoyance with d3 seems to be). While there may be room for this, I also feel (note emotion not backed with fact) like these concepts are also what will build too many limitations that will hinder the project itself. This competitor will likely live within the web components community once it's no longer dependent on angular.js, but will likely hit walls (just different walls than the ones you're currently frustrated with d3.js) that are going to be hard to get through.
I have thought about this stuff in the past (http://bl.ocks.org/milroc/5519819 http://youtu.be/Hd2rye9a9kk) and recommended a wrapped directive approach for angular.js (and other MV*) but as I said above the next steps are going to be MUCH more difficult than we expect.
Cheers,
Miles
@milr0c
John Myles White's Vega.jl package [1] already supports inline D3 plots in IJulia notebooks using Vega [2]. I think it's still a bit beta (we only wrote the IJulia kernel a few weeks ago), but it's already quite capable. This may soon become my favorite way of doing data exploration in Julia (for other things I still love my terminal-based repl).
[1] https://github.com/johnmyleswhite/Vega.jl
[2] https://github.com/trifacta/vega
In Metaprogramming – Julia LanguageThis looks interesting, but what are the advantages of this over Vega, which is free?
https://github.com/trifacta/vega
In Polychart.js: An Interactive Charting LibraryJSON Data Visualizations with Vega
3 points · Open discussionYes, Vega is trying to serve multiple goals. A primary goal is indeed to make it easier for programs to make visualizations. Doing so also creates the opportunity to write new higher-level (and perhaps more user-friendly) generation tools. Possible examples include higher-level grammars like ggplot2 (Vega is lower-level but more expressive) or using Vega as a file format for visual, interactive design tools (an ongoing project in our group at Stanford).
In talks with journalism school instructors and others we've also learned that many novice programmers found models like Protovis easier for students to learn and use than D3, and JavaScript issues often dominated toolkit-specific issues. Our hope is that Vega proves simpler for a variety of tasks; that has certainly been our own experience so far.
That said, your post points out that the
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messaging on our website may be miscalibrated. We'll consider and revise appropriately.
For more about the specific motivations for Vega, read https://github.com/trifacta/vega/wiki/Vega-and-D3
Thanks for the feedback!