[Nfb-science] Nfb-science Digest, Vol 84, Issue 7

[Dave Mehtingerr]

Thanks for your responses. I'm sure the scatter plot data could be exported in excel format. Writing the data in CSV format would not be difficult. However I'm not sure how useful this would be in some cases. In one part of the data reduction process, astronomers use a scatter plot interface to visualize their data to in order to remove bad points. In many cases there can be tens of thousands of points. Generally outliers are easy to find by eye. Furthermore, each data point has associated with it many numerical metadata values. The interface is designed to allow astronomers to plot any metadata value vs any other metadata value; there are several techniques astronomers use to identify bad points. While this process could be done by exporting the values for each desired plot to excel, my naive suspicion is that it would quickly become too cumbersome to be practical. 

We do have a non graphical, command line driven, UI for finding outliers, but I'm uncertain how user friendly it is (not a part of the package I'm responsible for). 

The excel solution might be useful for other steps in processing. However, I'd be more interested in hearing about solutions available on both Linux and Mac as those are the platforms our software runs on. The closer the accessibility solution could be to our software, the better. Open Office has spreadsheet functionality, but I'm unsure of how accessible that is. 

My preference would also be for an open source solution, since our package is open source. But,  I'd consider that a nice to have rather than a requirement. 

On Jul 12, 2013, at 8:00 AM, nfb-science-request at nfbnet.org wrote:

> Send Nfb-science mailing list submissions to
>    nfb-science at nfbnet.org
> 
> To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit
>    http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/nfb-science_nfbnet.org
> or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to
>    nfb-science-request at nfbnet.org
> 
> You can reach the person managing the list at
>    nfb-science-owner at nfbnet.org
> 
> When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific
> than "Re: Contents of Nfb-science digest..."
> 
> 
> Today's Topics:
> 
>   1. Re: Accessibility of plots (Nathanael T. Wales)
> 
> 
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> Message: 1
> Date: Thu, 11 Jul 2013 18:20:29 -0400
> From: "Nathanael T. Wales" <ntwales at omsoft.com>
> To: nfb-science at nfbnet.org
> Subject: Re: [Nfb-science] Accessibility of plots
> Message-ID: <C7FF6DFFAC024037B947F398641D4956 at NathanaelPC>
> Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset=iso-8859-1;
>    reply-type=original
> 
> Also, I have interacted with plots using the base data, such as in an Excel 
> spreadsheet.  Could the data be exported into an Excel spreadsheet?
> 
> Nathanael
> 
> 
> -----Original Message----- 
> From: Dave Mehtingerr
> Sent: Monday, July 08, 2013 10:36 PM
> To: nfb-science at nfbnet.org
> Subject: [Nfb-science] Accessibility of plots
> 
> The software package my team develops has various GUIs. Some of these are 
> used for plotting data, usually in the form of two dimensional scatter plots 
> or two dimensional histogram plots. The software has the ability to export 
> these plots in popular formats, such as jpeg, png, etc. in some cases users 
> are able to interact with the GUIs to eg, select a point or set of points.
> 
> I'm curious as to what technologies are available that would allow a blind 
> user to examine or interact with such plots and/or how the software might be 
> modified to make these plots more accessible.
> 
> The basic architecture is a set of C++ libraries with a python interface 
> layer in the form of command line UI which can be used to launch to 
> aforementioned GUIs. Our software runs on 64 bit MacOS and Linux platforms, 
> but not Windows.
> 
> Thanks for any info or ideas.
> _______________________________________________
> Nfb-science mailing list
> Nfb-science at nfbnet.org
> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/nfb-science_nfbnet.org
> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for 
> Nfb-science:
> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/nfb-science_nfbnet.org/ntwales%40omsoft.com 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> ------------------------------
> 
> Subject: Digest Footer
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Nfb-science mailing list
> Nfb-science at nfbnet.org
> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/nfb-science_nfbnet.org
> 
> 
> ------------------------------
> 
> End of Nfb-science Digest, Vol 84, Issue 7
> ******************************************