Vega – A declarative language for interactive visualization designs

Good to see this project on the front page! We are using Vega (specifically Vega-Lite [1] as an engine and templates spec for data-science plots &#x2F; visualizations in DVC (e.g. how it looks like in VSCode extension [2]).<p>It allowed us to have:<p>- same engine in CLI (can generate HTML and open in browser), VSCode extensions, SaaS<p>- have a way to describe plot visualization &#x2F; representation as a declarative spec that can be then used in all those products (plot spec). We were exploring plotly and AFAIU there was no easy way to do the same<p>- it&#x27;s quite comprehensive and community is responsive, the project is maintained<p>To name a few downsides from our experience:<p>- DSL is quite complicated. It requires some time to master it. It hurts the adoption. In our case I don&#x27;t see that many users doing custom plots &#x2F; templates - majority is using pre-baked built-in stuff or use Python and export as SVG.<p>- In our case some features were missing (and are still missing) - exponential average - that is most commonly used to smooth ML training curves.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;vega.github.io&#x2F;vega-lite&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;vega.github.io&#x2F;vega-lite&#x2F;</a><p>[2] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;dvc.org&#x2F;doc&#x2F;user-guide&#x2F;experiment-management&#x2F;visualizing-plots#visualizing-plots" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;dvc.org&#x2F;doc&#x2F;user-guide&#x2F;experiment-management&#x2F;visuali...</a>

Wish GitHub markdown would support Vega-lite to create charts that would be a great combination.<p>Here is a brief discussion on the same <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;orgs&#x2F;community&#x2F;discussions&#x2F;16963">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;orgs&#x2F;community&#x2F;discussions&#x2F;16963</a>

We use Vega lite for our web base graphs at work. We love the “export as svg” feature. It’s by the same people but with fewer options but easier to set up.<p>Like all graphing libraries, it’s chasing the gold standard which is R’s ggplot2. It’s as close as we’ve found in JavaScript, plus it can be interactive.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;vega.github.io&#x2F;vega-lite&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;vega.github.io&#x2F;vega-lite&#x2F;</a><p>They have a python version as well.

Wow, Vega is here!<p>All our projects for data analytic and visualization are based on vega&#x2F;vega-lite, really impressive by vega&#x27;s signals design when i learned it first time(it&#x27;s like rxjs, which i also love).<p>Share some work based on vega&#x2F;vega-lite:<p>- PyGWalker: turn dataframe to tableau alternative UI in jupyter: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;Kanaries&#x2F;pygwalker">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;Kanaries&#x2F;pygwalker</a> - RATH: Automation of data exploration workflow with one click. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;Kanaries&#x2F;Rath">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;Kanaries&#x2F;Rath</a> - GWalkR: drag-and-drop based visualization in RStudio, <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;kanaries.net&#x2F;gwalkr" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;kanaries.net&#x2F;gwalkr</a>

Also there&#x27;s Vega-Altair for using this from Python: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;altair-viz.github.io&#x2F;gallery&#x2F;index.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;altair-viz.github.io&#x2F;gallery&#x2F;index.html</a>

the uw data lab behind vega also has a new library mosaic[1] that seems pretty exciting. My impression was it allows flexible data transformation&#x2F;slicing in both the client side and server side, with the same dsl.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;uwdata&#x2F;mosaic">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;uwdata&#x2F;mosaic</a>

I was expecting a more language like thing on the description. Something like gnuplot. Maybe the grammar of graphics available to R. Instead, this is json schemas, if I&#x27;m understanding correctly.

There&#x27;s also interesting projects for serverside scaling of vega plots - <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;vega&#x2F;vegafusion">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;vega&#x2F;vegafusion</a>

Could you use this for building infrastructure&#x2F;dependency maps?

Python has a Vega-lite package called Altair, which is very pleasant and powerful. [0]<p>0 - <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;altair-viz.github.io" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;altair-viz.github.io</a>

And don&#x27;t miss Altair, the Python library to use Vega <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;altair-viz.github.io&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;altair-viz.github.io&#x2F;</a>

It feels like Vega is a viable path toward something bigger, like a global, W3C type standard for visualization, but unfortunately not as adopted as it deserves.<p>It was used in a mediawiki&#x2F;wikipedia extension for graphs [1] but the whole exposing graphs to editors seems to have been dropped.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;m.mediawiki.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Extension:Graph" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;m.mediawiki.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Extension:Graph</a>

I&#x27;ve used Vega as part of a complex dashboard builder (think Looker&#x2F;Tableau) and it is quite powerful and flexible, but like all of these libraries once you stray from the well worn tracks things get tricky.<p>For example, it was difficult to build charts from pre-aggregated data, like a box plot given p5, p25, p50, mean, p75 p95 and a list of outliers.

heh: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;vega.github.io&#x2F;vega&#x2F;examples&#x2F;pacman&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;vega.github.io&#x2F;vega&#x2F;examples&#x2F;pacman&#x2F;</a> and <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;vega.github.io&#x2F;vega&#x2F;examples&#x2F;platformer&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;vega.github.io&#x2F;vega&#x2F;examples&#x2F;platformer&#x2F;</a>

I haven&#x27;t used Vega in probably close to a decade, but I remember when I was working with it, it was often extremely limited and rigid compared to D3. Only maybe 10% of the time could Vega be used for our use cases. Overall, the work to support both Vega and D3 ended up being more troublesome than just using D3 for all visualizations

How does Vega compare to Observable Plot?<p>I&#x27;m going to be needing a JS&#x2F;TS rendering option shortly at my job, and I&#x27;m comparing tins.

I really like the idea of this, really like it, but the notation &#x2F;json layout honestly feels a bit of a dud.

this is one of my all time favorite projects... it blows away a lot of the other charting&#x2F; data viz libraries. shocked more people haven&#x27;t picked it up

JSON??<p>I don&#x27;t want to programm anything without comments.<p>I guess you can easily convert from use yaml or json5, but all the examples are still in json.

For people who have used both vega and Apache echarts, how do they compare?