Combo layout of nesting Nodes

[cliffordfajardo]

Feature Request

A option to nest nodes inside of other nodes using "Combos".
I've only seen 2 libraries that allow this:

• Keylines/Regraph (required paid license, close source):
  • https://cambridge-intelligence.com/category/regraph/combos-regraph/
• G6:
  • https://g6.antv.vision/en/docs/manual/middle/elements/combos/defaultCombo
• Ogma by Linkcurious (required paid license, close source)
  • https://linkurious.com/blog/ogma-3-0-visual-grouping-out-in-beta/
  • https://doc.linkurio.us/ogma/latest/examples/visual-grouping.html
• Cisco NextUI (unmaintained since 2017): Cisco NextUI Node sets
  example

This Gif is from the regraph library linked above

GIF from g6

This is from Linkcurious Ogma library

001-visual-grouping-ogma-linkciurious.mp4

What is the motivation / use case for changing the behavior?

• Combos toggle / hide detail on demand
• visually group nodes and links, reduces complexity of the graph for user's navigating the data
• offers exploratory method of navigating a data set / graph

References

• Keylines/Regraph Combos
• G6 Combo
  • Docs
  • Code
• Ogma
  • Docs: https://doc.linkurio.us/ogma/latest/examples/visual-grouping.html
  • Blog: https://linkurious.com/blog/ogma-3-0-visual-grouping-out-in-beta/

[amcdnl]

@cliffordfajardo - Would you say this is just 'clustering' with a 'container'?

[amcdnl]

Some code references: https://github.com/antvis/layout/blob/2bff433a2bd5c5b6612b87971f7ad99e566c4235/src/layout/force/force-in-a-box.ts

[cliffordfajardo]

@cliffordfajardo - Would you say this is just 'clustering' with a 'container'?

It appears to be clustering with container;
to be honest, I hadn't dug into what underlying algorithm they used as I'm fairly new to the data visualization space

Curious, had you seen this concept of Combo before?

• I spent almost 2 months end of last year trying to find open source libraries that supported this combo concept.
  G6 is the only 1 to my knowledge that does this, but at this time its a bit buggy and the G6 team is working lots of other stuff; commercially Cambridge Intelligence is the only one offers it.
• End of last year, I was google-ing for nearly 2 months a library that supported this combo/clustering with container(s) that supported nesting Combos N levels deep (you can arbitrarily nest).

Practical Use Cases Examples ↓

Examples (click to expand)

1. Infrastructure visualization

• imagine you want to visualize your devices for your company
• level1: combos at the root could represent data centers, when clicked you are shown more combos inside called clusters
• level2: cluster combos can contain individual nodes

2. Country Data Visualization

• Countries -> Regions -> Cities -> Individuals

3. Social Network Analysis

[amcdnl]

@cliffordfajardo - Ya, I have a use case for it too ( cyber-security network graphs ).

I'm interested in doing it, if you wanna take a stab at it feel free, otherwise its going to be quite a bit of work so not sure when i'll be able to do it but i'm interested.

[amcdnl]

We added clustering with group elements around it. The nested nested is a little tricky though.