PostGraphe: A System for the Generation of Statistical Graphics and Text

Graphics and text have to be well integrated in order to achieve their full potential. A picture shows but a text describes. In a statistical report, graphics show the data that is analyzed in the text. This paper describes a system, called PostGraphe, which generates a report integrating graphics and text from a single set of writer's intentions. The system is given the data in tabular form as might be found in a spreadsheet; also input is a declaration of the types of values in the columns of the table. The user chooses the intentions to be conveyed in the graphics (e.g. compare two variables, show the evolution of a set of variables ...) and the system generates a report in IgTEX with the appropriate PostScript graphic files.

[1]  Edward R. Tufte,et al.  Envisioning Information , 1990 .

[2]  Steven F. Roth,et al.  Graphics and Natural Language as Components of Automatic Explanation , 1988, SGCH.

[3]  Jock D. Mackinlay.  Automatic design of graphical presentations , 1987 .

[4]  Jock D. Mackinlay,et al.  Automating the design of graphical presentations of relational information , 1986, TOGS.

[5]  W. Cleveland,et al.  Graphical Perception: Theory, Experimentation, and Application to the Development of Graphical Methods , 1984 .

[6]  Gerardine DeSanctis,et al.  An Investigation of the "Tables Versus Graphs" Controversy in a Learning Environment , 1985, ICIS.

[7]  Michel Gagnon,et al.  From Conceptual Time to Linguistic Time , 1996, Comput. Linguistics.

[8]  Johanna D. Moore,et al.  Generating Explanatory Captions for Information Graphics , 1995, IJCAI.

[9]  Andrew Ehrenberg,et al.  Rudiments of Numeracy , 1977 .

[10]  Wolfgang Wahlster,et al.  WIP: The Automatic Synthesis of Multimodal Presentations , 1991, AAAI Workshop on Intelligent Multimedia Interfaces.

[11]  Patricia Wright,et al.  The comprehension of tabulated information: Some similarities between reading prose and reading tables , 1980 .

[12]  Edward Rolf Tufte,et al.  The visual display of quantitative information , 1985 .

[13]  John J. Bertin,et al.  The semiology of graphics , 1983 .

[14]  C. J. Date.  An Introduction to Database Systems, Volume II , 1980 .

[15]  Richard D. Powers,et al.  A study of graph comprehension difficulties , 1959 .

[16]  Howard G. Schutz,et al.  An Evaluation of Formats for Graphic Trend Displays—Experiment II1 , 1961 .

[17]  Stephen M. Casner,et al.  Task-analytic approach to the automated design of graphic presentations , 1991, TOGS.

[18]  Massimo Fasciano.  Génération intégrée de textes et de graphiques statistiques , 1996 .

[19]  P. Fayers,et al.  The Visual Display of Quantitative Information , 1990 .