Abstract:
We characterize the design space of the algorithms that sequentially tile a
rectangular area with smaller, fixed-surface, rectangles. This space consist
of five independent dimensions: Order, Size, Score, Recurse and Phrase. Each
of these dimensions describe a particular aspect of such layout tasks. This
class of layouts is interesting, because, beyond encompassing simple grids,
tables and trees, it also includes all kinds of treemaps involving the
placement of rectangles. For instance, Slice and dice, Squarified, Strip and
Pivot layouts are various points in this five dimensional space. Many classic
statistics visualizations, such as 100% stacked bar charts, mosaic plots and
dimensional stacking, are also instances of this class. A few new and
potentially interesting points in this space are introduced, such as spiral
treemaps and variations on the strip layout. The core algorithm is
implemented as a JavaScript prototype that can be used as a layout component
in a variety of InfoViz toolkits.