"I can really see myself using this"

Big win !!!

As the Shuffl project draws to a close, I have been having some doubts about the amount of progress made, and have been asking myself whether it was the right decision to spend effort on data visualization within Shuffl (which has been time consuming). But I've just had a real boost.

During a brief demonstration to Chris Holland, I showed him his own spreadsheet data loaded and plotted as graphs in Shuffl, eliciting the response:

"I can really see myself using this"

Vindication indeed!

Chris described the ability to quickly draw up plots and add annotations without having to use four different programs as a real winner for him. Working with Chris' own data, I have seen the need for and implemented (a) selecting data blocks from within a worksheet, and (b) supporting a mixture of linear and logarithmic data plots, both of which I believe to have been contributory to Chris' response.

We have agreed that:

• Label editing (requested previously) is not an immediate priority
• Plot colour selection would still be nice
• I shall focus my remaining efforts on improving the user interface for workspace saving and loading (which will require some reworking of the storage interface, but will in any case prepare the ground for continuing Shuffl work in the ADMIRAL project), and
• I shall arrange to install a copy of eXist on a computer accessible to Chris so he can try using Shuffl in his own environment.

The main new feature that Chris requested during the demonstration was the ability to print a Shuffl workspace, or save it as an image for incorporation into a paper or document. I think this is a reasonable and do-able goal, but it won't be implemented within the current project. Maybe as part of ADMIRAL? For now, there is screen capture and printing.

There is also an interaction here with discussions I've had with Scott Wilson (Wookie Widgets) and Ross Gardler (OSS Watch), in which I have been wisely cautioned against trying to make Shuffl into a generic application server. If data visualization is to prove a draw for engaging with researchers then, looking forward to the ADMIRAL project, I think I should look seriously into the possibility of incorporating a Wookie server into the planned ADMIRAL Data Store server (LSDS). I suspect that a real win here would be if Wookie can serve a widget for displaying raw spreadsheet content (by "raw", I mean here without export to CSV format). I look forward to more interesting discussion and exploration.