visophyte is two things:
- A visualization library which is the successor to koalaRainbow 0, a Movable Type “visualization engine” I wrote in Perl for the Movable Type 3.0 plugin contest. Realistically, koalaRainbow 0 was not so much a visualization engine as an XPath-like query constraint system with support for procedural drawing logic shoe-horned into a tag-based syntax. Visophyte builds on some lessons learned from koalaRainbow 0, but mainly it’s just the same desire made manifest in a python form. This is good because I use python for both work and play, and so the library is useful to me and likely to see continual development. In contrast, koalaRainbow 0 was something I wrote because I wanted to learn Perl so I could complain about it with a voice of experience; also I didn’t mind possibly winning a shiny Powerbook. It did not see further development both because I am not a perl-lover, was not a (Movable Type) blogger, and also because I was rather busy. Because I like to confuse people, I am somewhat calling the visualization library in visophyte “koala rainbow”, at least in that its package is ‘kr’.
- A home for specific applications of the visualization engine, since a “visualization engine” is just a fancy name for a plotting library or yet another rendering API unless you do something practical with it. Also, I have actual needs and desires driving the library.
Visophyte is currently under development by me, Andrew Sutherland.