[Walrus-dev] Walrus

[metadata@tampabay.rr.com]

Greetings.

First allow me to congratulate the developers and project staff on a very fine 
product. The potential use cases for this technology are limitless (within 
logical reason). The display is sufficiently impressive as to "scare" people 
who still feel the Earth (and metadata theory) is flat. ;-)

I have managed to get Walrus to function on NT using OpenGL.
I'm still studying the graph format but so far I have been able to graph 
several hundred node experimental lineage maps with node metadata such as name, 
data type, length, precision, scale, etc.

One observation is that there is no way to "zoom" in as close as I would like 
to.

Is there a way to specify minimum link length in order to coerce the graph into 
a larger space? The Champagne graph has better "zoom" properties so I assume it 
is relative to the complexity and number of nodes/links.

Suggestions for future consideration are:
1. Alter the display of the node attributes to column format as opposed to a 
single string (that runs off the screen)
2. Add the ability to define font settings
3. Print capability
4. Save to image format
5. Add a specialized attribute type for URL and add a subroutine to open the 
web browser and navigate to the URL when some activation sequence is detected.
6. Add capability to use jdbc as a means of acquiring graph data from 
relational data stores.
7. Add a specialized attribute to define node sprite to allow use of small 
icons set to display based upon some defining node attribute.
8. Add the capability to add links. This is more work than I expect anyone to 
do anytime soon. It is an interesting idea. This would probably require use of 
the aforementioned database connectivity.

If anyone has questions or requests that I may assist with just ask.

Steve Tilson,
Metadata "Architect" specializing in information reliability,
Central Florida,
metadata@tampabay.rr.com