3d code views in SN?

3d code views in SN?

[Mo DeJong]

I just poked around on this VTK site, it looks
very nice. There are already Tk bindings in place,
so adding a cool 3d xref may not be hard at all.

http://www.kitware.com/vtk.html

Mo DeJong
Red Hat Inc

Re: 3d code views in SN?

[Ian Roxborough]

Yeah, I've played around with adding 3D xref and stuff,
to tell the truth there isn't a great value in 3D xref
(without using a VR headset).  2D xref is way better than
3D, less confusing and easier to understand.

Of course I'm not saying the 3D graphics have no place in
source code comprehension, but currently there usefulness
is limited.

Ian.

Mo DeJong wrote:
> 
> I just poked around on this VTK site, it looks
> very nice. There are already Tk bindings in place,
> so adding a cool 3d xref may not be hard at all.
> 
> http://www.kitware.com/vtk.html
> 
> Mo DeJong
> Red Hat Inc

Re: 3d code views in SN?

[Eray Ozkural (exa)]

Ian Roxborough wrote:
> 
> Yeah, I've played around with adding 3D xref and stuff,
> to tell the truth there isn't a great value in 3D xref
> (without using a VR headset).  2D xref is way better than
> 3D, less confusing and easier to understand.
> 

It all depends on the kind of visualization you're making.
There are many ways to visualize graphs in 2d and 3d.


> Of course I'm not saying the 3D graphics have no place in
> source code comprehension, but currently there usefulness
> is limited.

What you need is a good (2d) graph visualization library. I don't
know if I mentioned this before but graphviz has a nice tk
extension which you might use if you upgrade to upstream versions
of tcl/tk. I'd tried to use it in my dependency graph generator
code but hadn't succeeded due to incompatibility.

On the other hand, graphviz in my experience does not scale up
to large graphs so the benefit of using it is questionable. But
it certainly is better than the current vis. in sourcenav.

One day, I might write one that is scalable of course ;)

Sincerely,

-- 
Eray (exa) Ozkural
Comp. Sci. Dept., Bilkent University, Ankara
e-mail: erayo@cs.bilkent.edu.tr
www: http://www.cs.bilkent.edu.tr/~erayo