[Infovis] XmdvTool 8.0 released

[Matt Ward]

The newest version of XmdvTool, a software package for visual 
exploration of multivariate datasets, is now available at 
http://davis.wpi.edu/xmdv.  XmdvTool has been in the public domain since 
1994, and has been under continuous development since then.  It supports 
many popular methods for multivariate data visualization, including 
parallel coordinates, scatterplot matrices, star glyphs, dimensional 
stacking, and pixel oriented techniques, as well as a powerful set of 
interaction tools.  New features in version 8 include:

(1)A new software architecture: The new system is based on the information
visualization reference model (or visualization pipeline) developed by Ed
Chi.  For more details on our extensions to this pipeline, please see 
our paper in VDA10 (available on our website).

(2)New development environment: We have ported  XmdvTool to Eclipse using
Qt for the UI to enhance portability.  Source code is freely available 
for developers.

(3)Multiple views: User can open multiple datasets at once, and observe
each dataset in multiple sub windows with different visualizations.  These
windows can be tiled and cascaded.

(4)Color strategy: With a new color strategy dialog, users can assign colors
to datapoints based on data values or different orderings.  We support 
sequential,
diverging, and qualitative  color maps based on Cynthia Brewer's work
(http://colorbrewer2.org).

(5)CSV files support:  We enable users to open comma-separated values
(CSV) files directly in XmdvTool, in addition to the XmdvTool native file
format (.okc).

The website contains links to the source code and executables, as well 
as documentation, translation tools, datasets, and case studies.  The 
XmdvTool Project is supported by the National Science Foundation under 
grants IIS-9732897, IRIS 97-29878, IIS-0119276, IIS-0414380, 
IIS-0812027, and CCF-0811510.   Questions can be directed to 
xmdv at cs.wpi.edu.

Matt Ward
Computer Science Department
Worcester Polytechnic Institute