Ink is an interactive visual tool for exploring correspondence data developed within the Athanasius project. It provides three different views on the data:
- a map showing the path of each letter (source/destination)
- a time-based stacked bar for comparing the composition of correspondent groups over time
- an alluvial diagram highlighting the relations between three (or more) dimensions of the data related to correspondents
The three visualizations are interrelated: by choosing a specific dimension or value in the alluvial diagram it will be possible to see its distribution over time, in the stacked bar.
###Data model
Three main data collections (as JSON files into /data folder) are used:
light.json
Contains the collection of letters in a lightweight format:
[
{
a : "authorId",
d : "destinationId",
s : "sourceId",
r : "recipientId",
t : "year",
id : "letterId"
},
...
]
people.json
Contains the collection of persons in a single JSON object (keys are persons'id)
{
"personId":
{
"Name": "...",
"Gender": "…",
"Milieu1": "…",
"Milieu2": "…",
"Milieu3": "…",
"Nationality": "...",
"Id": "personId"
},
...
}
places.json
Similar to places.json, contains the collection of places in a single JSON object (keys are persons'id)
{
"placeId":
{
"City": "",
"PlaceName": "",
"Country": "",
"Region": "",
"FullName": "",
"_id": "",
"InLocationDB": ""
},
...
}
###Technology
From a technological point of view, Ink is a web applications using PHP and Python for processing and serving the data and JavaScript (d3 and jQuery libraries) for the visualizations and the UI.