The Omni Mouth » OmniGraphSketcher

OmniGraphSketcher 1.0.1 Beta 1

posted by dave on 08.24.09 @ 4:35 pm

We’re still working on adding great features like automatic creation of Error Bars to OmniGraphSketcher 1.1, but in the meantime we’re putting out version 1.0.1 to ensure compatibility with any forthcoming OS X updates from Apple. In addition, this release features quite a few bug fixes, adds a “Select All Fills” menu item, and gives users the ability to import data that has text labels specified for only some rows.

You can read the full release notes and grab Beta 1 here. Please don’t hesitate to email or Help > Send Feedback if you encounter any new issues or if you just want to chat about how you use OmniGraphSketcher.

It Turns Out You Can Make Error Bars With OmniGraphSketcher

posted by robin on 07.24.09 @ 11:14 am

Update: As of version 1.1, the new “Make Error Bars” command takes care of all steps after importing your data into OmniGraphSketcher.

The advantage of having such a general-purpose graphing program is that the possibilities are almost endless. So endless, in fact, that it took us until just now to realize that making vertical error bars (a popular feature request) is actually pretty easy.

As an example, suppose you ran an experiment that involved taking many imperfect measurements each year, over 12 years. One nice way of visualizing the results is to calculate a confidence interval statistic for each year of samples and display those intervals as “error bars”:

It turns out there is already a reasonably easy way to make plots like this in OmniGraphSketcher (and we hope to make it much easier in the future). First, as with any data analysis work, you will probably want to start the process using a spreadsheet or statistics program to do the necessary calculations and data organization. You will want to end up with four columns: (1) the x-value for each data bin (in our example, the year); (2) the median data value for each bin; (3) the upper end of each confidence interval (the tops of the error bars); and (4) the lower end (bottoms). Here is an example of my data in Numbers (Apple’s spreadsheet program):

The x-values must be in the first column, but the other three columns can be in any order.

Here are the values as selectable text, if you want to follow along with this example yourself:

year, median, upper .05, lower .05
1940, 52.4, 59.8, 43.2
1941, 62.6, 66.2, 49.6
1942, 54.9, 66.5, 51.6
1943, 79.1, 88.9, 68.8
1944, 97.6, 104.6, 90.6
1945, 117.5, 123.2, 110.1
1946, 121.7, 126.5, 107.5
1947, 110.3, 114.7, 99.1
1948, 98.2, 106, 86.4
1949, 93.1, 101.2, 78.5
1950, 94, 103.5, 86.2
1951, 79.7, 90.6, 66.3

Select that whole block of data, copy it, and paste it into OmniGraphSketcher. In most cases, you should probably follow that up by setting the axis ranges with View –> Scale To Fit Data. You will end up with something like this:

Your three data columns have become data series plots that share the x-values from the initial column.

Now, the first magic step is to turn the “tops” and “bottoms” into the tick-mark data point type. This data point style is cool because it automatically becomes perpendicular to any attached line. It’s easy to select the top and bottom point series by clicking on a point from the top series, holding the shift key, and then clicking a point from the bottom series. (Both clicks will select the whole series because imported data are “grouped” by default.) Once those are selected, just choose the tick point style in the Style inspector:

Your graph should now look a bit weird, like this:

Those tick mark points are at a default jaunty angle because they don’t yet have lines attached. In the second magic step, you provide those lines. This is a little repetitive in OmniGraphSketcher 1.0, but not too bad unless you have dozens of data points. Start by dragging the selection box across the first vertical set of three points that will form an error bar group. When those are selected, hit command-shift-K (which corresponds to Edit –> Line –> Straight). Ta-da, you have your first error bar! Now you will have to go through each vertical set, selecting the points and hitting command-shift-K. When you’re done, you should have something like this:

How lovely! You can still easily select all of the “tops” or “bottoms” and change their color or size. There is one last trick to help you change the color or size of all of the “bars” themselves. Choose Edit –> Select All –> Lines. Then click on “Group” in the toolbar. Now your bars are a grouped set just like the top ticks and bottom ticks, so whenever you click on one bar, all of the other bars will also be selected. Now that you can select everything so easily, it is a snap to edit visual styles to make the error bars more subdued, if you’d like. Here they are with a dark gray color and thickness of 1.0 (and a few axis touch-ups):

Beautiful!

In a future version of OmniGraphSketcher, we plan to include the capability to automatically find those vertical groups and do all of the repetitive steps for you.

A better tool (for graphing)

posted by Linda on 07.14.09 @ 3:02 pm

One of my pet peeves, aside from possessive apostrophes on plural nouns and the belief that the virus-afflicted in 28 Days/Weeks Later are zombies (helllo-ooo, they aren’t dead), is when someone emails me an Excel document that contains information that has nothing to do with spreadsheet functionality. You use a spreadsheet as a text editor, really? What do you brush your teeth with, a CHAINSAW?

Nothing against spreadsheet programs, it’s just that if you’re not doing a bunch of number crunching, there are better tools for the job. Much as I enjoy the giddy thrill of a good pivot table, I’d rather not mess with one if I don’t have to.

(Note: I so don’t know what a pivot table is.)

This totally manufactured topic gives me a great segue into talking about OmniGraphSketcher, because—wait for the tie-in!—if you’ve ever found yourself embroiled in an epic battle with an illustration program in order to make a pretty graph and it’s all dude, I don’t know what you mean by “axes”, but I can help you draw a wicked awesome flaming alien skull; so you switch to a spreadsheet program but it’s all, IT ENTERS THE DATA IN THE BUCKET OR IT GETS THE HOSE, and you’re like what bucket, you know the annoyance of using the wrong tool. The chainsaw! It barely holds the toothpaste!

We think OmniGraphSketcher falls into the “better tool” category for any time you want to quickly draw a spiffy graph, but don’t want to mess with all the bells and whistles of a program that does more than you need it to do. OmniGraphSketcher definitely isn’t intended to replace a powerhouse data visualization tool; it’s meant for quick, accurate, easy-on-the-eye graphmaking.

Behold these emailed kudos, sent it by actual users:

I just tried OmniGraph Sketcher. And wow. Seriously. I routinely use both Excel and Stata for charts, and… wow. You’ve created one mean tool here. I’m impressed. While I have oooooodles more options in Stata and can create more complicated graphs in that tool, OGS is easier to futz with by far. I’ll be using it a lot in the future.

and:

As a note of appreciation I would like to say how much this program has helped me. I do a lot of sketch-graphing for business assignments. [...] my collegues have often asked what package I use to produce such ‘beautiful’ graphs. The most frequent question to me is ‘how do you do that?’ Email replies when I sent a graph via email often start out with ‘very impressive’, ‘great graph’ or ‘this is very good’. And these are people who do a lot of scientific or business graphing using Excel and other packages.

If you’re thinking, yeah, but I don’t NEED to make graphs, please enjoy some of these images from Omni’s Rejected WWDC 2009 T-Shirt Design Archives:

Nerdiness in GRAPH FORM, people. You don’t need to be making a fancy P&L presentation to enjoy this app, is what I’m saying.

Download it for yourself here. You can demo OmniGraphSketcher for two weeks without anyone getting all up in your grill: no nags, no emails, nothing. Give it a try and let us know what you think!

What has iPhone done for YOU lately?

posted by Linda on 07.01.09 @ 12:15 pm

Hopefully you caught the news earlier today: OmniGraphSketcher is now final. Congratulations to the OGS team! And hey, if you’ve been wanting desperately to buy OmniGraphSketcher for all your graph sketching needs but couldn’t do so because our store didn’t support PayPal, you’d best be buying yourself a lottery ticket because THIS IS YOUR LUCKY DAY.

On a totally unrelated note, let’s talk about iPhones! Specifically, what’s the most useful/fun/cool thing you’ve done with your phone lately? I put this question to some of the Omni folk, and here are their answers:

Kris, Support Ninja: “I’ve settled many a “Where should we go?” hive-mind-cluster-fart by popping open the Yelp app and searching for nearby options. I’ve also bookmarked my own lil’ Zagat Guide of the local places that I love, and places to check out when I travel. Being able to click a link to call for reservations, get a map with directions, or view real people’s reviews make this app tremendously useful for me.”

Aaron, Sysadmin: “When we were in a car wreck I felt like I was living in one of those silly Apple ads. First I took out the phone to call the police (everyone was OK, BTW) followed by my insurance company. Then I snapped some pictures of the scene and damage to email to the claims adjuster. Finally, after everything was all written up I used the Google maps app to find the closest tow truck company and call them to come pick up my busted rig.”

Tim, VP Software Development: “I recently bought Jaadu VNC which lets you connect to your Mac’s screen on the phone. So, my kids are in the office and I’m out sitting on the couch. I connect to my machine and use Jaadu’s keyboard to start using the “say” command in Terminal to freak them out. I live in the future, where technology is good for evil.”

Bill, User Experience Lead: “I recently ditched my real camera because the iPhone 3G S camera is quite adequate for any photo or video I care to take. When I’m listening to the Wait Wait . . . Don’t Tell Me! podcast, I like to switch over to YouTube and catch up on whatever current event they’re talking about, because I usually have no idea. Uh, I have also used the Amazon app to photograph, research, and buy a book. While standing in the physical bookstore. *shame*”

My own example: last week I was parking in a totally unfamiliar part of Seattle, so I used Maps to drop a pin at my car’s location. When I was ready to go home, instead of wandering the streets for hours on end weeping hysterically, I just pulled up walking directions to find my way back. Not only that, but since I’m so directionally challenged I find instructions like “walk south” to be completely meaningless, I used the compass to keep me heading the right way. OH IPHONE I LOVE YOU.

How about you guys? Have any how-my-phone-improved-my-life stories to share?

OmniGraphSketcher Release Candidate 2

posted by dave on 06.25.09 @ 4:42 pm

Today we’re releasing OmniGraphSketcher 1.0 RC 2, which is identical to RC 1 except for some changes that should remedy a crash related to text editing. You can download via the website or software update. Thanks to everyone that has submitted feedback and crash reports during the beta process!

OmniGraphSketcher 1.0 Release Candidate

posted by dave on 06.23.09 @ 2:58 pm

We’re quickly approaching the final OmniGraphSketcher 1.0 release, and today are making RC1 available via software update and the download page.

Lead developer Robin has added some more optimizations for dealing with larger .ograph files, as well as fixed some nagging bugs and crashes. We now interpret parenthesized numbers as negative when importing, and sharp-eyed users will notice a refined selection highlight. OmniGraphSketcher’s rectangular selection tool is now more consistent with OmniGraffle’s (finding all graph elements that intersect with with the selection rectangle). This release also features a complete help document.

You can read the full release notes here or from the Help menu within the application. As usual, please don’t hesitate to send us your feedback and any crash reports that are generated. While version 1.0 is feature-complete, we’ve got great stuff planned for the future.

OmniGraphSketcher beta 5!

posted by dave on 06.03.09 @ 1:11 pm

Hot on the heels of beta 4, we’re releasing OmniGraphSketcher beta 5.

As promised last week, this beta includes support for Quick Look and Spotlight indexing. Older .ograph files will need to be re-saved to get these features. Quick Look and Spotlight are also now enabled for .graph files created with Robin Stewart Software Graph Sketcher.

We’ve added a menu command called “Make Current Styles Default” which saves your current fonts and axis visibility settings as defaults for future graphs.

Clicking the “Connect Points” button at the bottom of the data inspector will now connect points in the order they appear in the list (creation order), rather than from left to right. The other methods of connection (style inspector, Edit menu item) continue to connect from left to right.

OmniGraphSketcher documents in progress are now auto-saved. If you should experience a crash, your document will be reopened when you relaunch the application.

If OmniGraphSketcher does crash on you, please be sure to click the button to send us the crash report, which will help us make the final version as stable as humanly possible. If you have time to attach your file and/or tell us what you were doing when it crashed, that’s even better.

You can check out the rest of the release notes and download beta 5 here (or just “Check for Updates…” within the application).

OmniGraphSketcher beta 4 is here!

posted by dave on 05.27.09 @ 11:15 am

Today we’re releasing OmniGraphSketcher beta 4, our biggest update since the initial beta. Here are some highlights from the release notes:

We’ve added new toolbar buttons and a preliminary help book.
Point snapping and detaching is greatly improved.
Import can now handle all currency symbols as well as quotation marks around values.
Lots of bug fixes related to undo/redo and copy/paste.
Shift and command key behavior is now consistent with other Omni applications.
.ograph files are now .zip-compressed when saved (this means smaller files now, and the return of Quick Look support in the near future).
Many other user-reported bugs fixed. Thanks for all of your feedback!

You can grab OmniGraphSketcher beta 4 here, or via software update. As always, we’d love to hear from you via the Help > Send Feedback menu item or at omnigraphsketcher@omnigroup.com.

OmniGraphSketcher 1.0 beta 3 Available

posted by dave on 04.21.09 @ 11:32 am

OmniGraphSketcher beta 3 is now available! This release includes a fix for the alerts users have reported when filling certain types of areas, as well as better support for opening corrupted files. Best-fit lines can now have undefined slope, and the inspector layouts have been adjusted slightly. You can get beta 3 via software update or from the OmniGraphSketcher download page.

Thanks to everyone who has submitted feedback so far! Please keep those emails coming – you can also “Send Feedback” from the OmniGraphSketcher Help menu.

OmniGraphSketcher 1.0 Beta 2 Available

posted by dave on 03.31.09 @ 4:20 pm

Beta 2 of OmniGraphSketcher is now available via software update or from the OmniGraphSketcher Product Page. This release features a few bug and crash fixes, as well as an updated “Getting Started” document. You can read the full release notes in the OmniGraphSketcher help menu.

We’ve also got a new screencast, focused on importing and working with data from another application. You can find it on the main OmniGraphSketcher page as well.

Thanks to everyone who has downloaded the beta and sent feedback so far! If you have any graphs (made with OmniGraphSketcher or that you’d like to be able to make) that you think are interesting, we’d love to see them – it really helps us figure out just what people are using the tool for. You can contact our support ninjas via Help > Send Feedback or by emailing omnigraphsketcher@omnigroup.com.

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