VISHNU:
Overview
This is a document search engine with several new visualization front ends that aid navigation through the set of documents returned by a query. Keywords from the document set are identified and selected on the fly. These keywords are then used to compute document clusters. The clusters can be displayed and explored using three visualisations: Sammon cluster view, Dendro map or radial interactive visualization.Quick start
The application should open with a data collection loaded. The
documents are from the Wall Street Journal and are about classical
music. Type a query into the search box and click the Find button. A
suitable query might be Brahms. Each pane will then display the query
results in a different manner.
PlainVis --- This shows a ranked list of documents
retrieved. Clicking on the link for a document (in the left most
column) will bring up a new window containing the document.
RadialVis --- This shows the
key words from the retrived document set around a circle with the
documents represented by dots within the circle. The dots are arranged
closest to the words that contain them. Clicking on a word will
highlight the documents containing that word. Correspongingly, clicking
on a dot will show the words that it contains. Words can be dragged
which will move the dots, thus changing the influnce of that particular
word on the arrangement.
At the bottom part of the pane key words can be selected od de-selected.
SammonVis --- This displays
documents clustered by key words. As you mouse over a cluster a menu is
displayed. This shows the number of documents in the cluster, and at
the bottom of the menu the top ranked key words used to form the
cluster. Clicking on the number of documents brings up the key words
and their percentages in the left hand frame and a summary of the
documents in the right hand frame. It is possible to drill down two
levels through this menu. To return to a higher level use the button at
the top of the frame.
DendroVis --- This
displays the document clusters arranged in a hierarchical format. As
you mouse over nodes in the display a menu similar to the SammonVis
menu is displayed. You can drill down through the hierarchy to examine
deeper nodes. The key words are displayed at each node. The menu
indicates if these are from the outer twigs (bottom) of the hierarchy.
Clicking on the number of documents in the node displays the keywords
and document summaries.
Application
This link -- VISHNU -- will open the application in a new browser. This may take a little while depending on the speed of your Internet connection.Papers
M Carey, D Heesch and S Rüger: Info navigator: a visualization interface for document searching and browsing. Int'l Conf on Distributed Multimedia Systems (DMS, Miami, FL), pp 23–28, ISBN 1-891706-13-6, Sep 2003