isabella232 / vail

VAIL (Visual Analytic Intent Language) is a language for modeling user intent, inferring missing or ambiguous intent, and figuring out how to effectively visualize intent

VAIL

Prototype for VAIL (Visual Analytic Intent Language).

• Why VAIL?
• Demo
• Get started
  • Prerequisites
  • Installation
  • Configuration
• Run VAIL
• Use VAIL

Why VAIL?

VAIL is a language for modeling user intent, inferring missing or ambiguous intent, and figuring out how to effectively visualize intent. Importantly, the user interacts with the intent, seeing and modifying it, rather than with the visualization, as you would with a system such as Tableau.

• specifications
  • intent: models user intent
  • output: an abstract description of an effective visualization
• engine
  • infer intent: infers missing or ambiguous information in a set of intent specifications
  • suggest output: figures out effective visualizations, taking intent specifications and creating an output specification
• converters: converts an output specification into a specific visualization format such as VizQL or text
• commands
  • edit: CRUD operations on intent specifications
  • manager: convert between different types of specifications

Demo

Watch a demo of using VAIL from an embedded Slack application.

Get started

This section describes how to install and configure VAIL.

Prerequisites

To work with VAIL, you need the following:

• A browser such as Firefox, Chrome, Edge, or Safari
• Install NPM
• Install Typescript

Installation

To install VAIL, follow these steps:

• Clone VAIL

Configuration

After you've installed or cloned VAIL, configure it by following these steps:

• At a command prompt, run npm install

Run VAIL

To run VAIL, follow these steps:

• If you wish to have it automatically rebuilt after every edit:
  • At a command prompt, run npm start.
  • This will load the sample page in the browser at http://localhost:3000
• If you wish to have it automatically rerun all the automated tests after every edit:
  • At a command prompt, run npm test.

Use VAIL

To learn how to use VAIL, see the documentation