JSOL: JavaScript Open-source Library for Grammar of Graphics

Abstract

In this paper, we introduce the JavaScript Open-source Library (\libname), a high-level grammar for representing data in visualization graphs and plots. \libname~perspective on the grammar of graphics is unique; it provides state-of-art rules for encoding visual primitives that can be used to generate a known scene or to invent a new one. \libname~has ton rules developed specifically for data-munging, mapping, and visualization through many layers, such as algebra, scales, and geometries. Additionally, it has a compiler that incorporates and combines all rules specified by a user and put them in a flow to validate it as a visualization grammar and check its requisites. Users can customize scenes through a pipeline that either puts customized rules or comes with new ones. We evaluated \libname~on a multitude of plots to check rules specification of customizing a specific plot. Although the project is still under development and many enhancements are under construction, this paper describes the first developed version of \libname, circa 2016, where an open-source version of it is available. One immediate practical deployment for JSOl is to be integrated with the open-source version of the Data Visualization Platform (DVP) \citep{Yousef2019DVP-arxiv}