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<a href="http://www.w3.org/"><img src="images/w3c_home.gif" alt="w3c_logo" border="0"/></a>
<a href="http://www.w3.org/RDF/" title="RDF Resource Description Framework">
<img border="0" src="http://www.w3.org/RDF/icons/rdf_developer_button.40" alt="RDF Resource Description Framework Developer Icon"/></a>

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<h1>IsaViz: A Visual Authoring Tool for RDF</h1>

<p><strong>Current stable version: 2.1 (October 2004)</strong></p>
<p><strong>Current development version: 3.0 alpha (May 2007)</strong></p>

<h2>Introduction</h2>
<p>IsaViz is a visual environment for browsing and authoring <a href="http://www.w3.org/RDF/">RDF</a> models represented as graphs. It features:</p>
<ul>
  <li>a 2.5D user interface allowing smooth zooming and navigation in the graph</li>
  <li>creation and editing of graphs by drawing ellipses, boxes and arcs</li>
  <li><a href="http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-rdf-syntax/">RDF/XML</a>, <a href="http://www.w3.org/2000/10/swap/Primer">Notation 3</a> and <a href="http://www.w3.org/TR/rdf-testcases/#ntriples">N-Triple</a> import</li>
  <li>RDF/XML, Notation 3 and N-Triple export, but also <a href="http://www.w3.org/Graphics/SVG/">SVG</a> and <a href="http://www.w3.org/Graphics/PNG/">PNG</a> export</li>
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<p>Since version 2.0, IsaViz can render RDF graphs using <a href="gss/gssmanual.html">GSS (Graph Stylesheets)</a>, a stylesheet language derived from <a href="http://www.w3.org/Style/CSS/">CSS</a> and <a href="http://www.w3.org/Graphics/SVG/">SVG</a> for styling RDF models represented as node-link diagrams.</p>
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<a href="images/isv8.png"><img src="images/isv8_th.png" style="border-style:none" alt="screenshot6"/><br /><br />IsaViz 2 with support for GSS (click to enlarge)</a>
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<h2>News</h2>

<hr />

<p id="ni20071021"><strong>IsaViz and Java 1.6 (2007-10-21)</strong></p>

<p>IsaViz 2.x is not compatible with Java 1.6 or later. It is recommended to download IsaViz 3.0 which does work with any version of Java. An alpha release is available (see <a href="#download">Download section</a>), which should be as stable as IsaViz 2.1 except for the new, still under development, Fresnel and FSL features.</p>

<hr />

<p><strong>IsaViz and GraphViz (2007-05-23)</strong></p>

<p>IsaViz 2.x is not compatible with GraphViz 2.10 or later. It is thus recommended to use GraphViz 2.8 or earlier with IsaViz 2.x. Alternatively, IsaViz 3.0-alpha now works with the latest version of GraphViz (currently 2.13). An alpha release is available (see <a href="#download">Download section</a>).</p>

<hr />

<p><strong>FSL (2006-10-26)</strong></p>

<p>Several bugs have been fixed in the FSL engines for Jena, Sesame and the visual FSL debugger embedded in IsaViz. A build of the latest <a href="http://dev.w3.org/cvsweb/java/classes/org/w3c/IsaViz/fresnel/">source code</a> can be <a href="http://www.lri.fr/~pietriga/IsaViz/#fsl">downloaded</a>.</p>

<hr />

<p><strong>Fresnel in IsaViz (2006-05-19)</strong></p>

<p>IsaViz 3.0 now supports <a href="http://www.w3.org/2005/04/fresnel-info/">Fresnel</a> <a href="http://www.w3.org/2005/04/fresnel-info/manual/#lenscore">lenses</a> and several elements of the <a href="http://www.w3.org/2005/04/fresnel-info/manual/#stylecore">Core Format Vocabulary</a>. IsaViz 3.0 is only available through CVS for the time being, and requires the latest version of <a href="http://zvtm.sourceforge.net/">ZVTM</a>. A <a href="http://www.lri.fr/~pietriga/2006/05/fresnelIsaViz.mov">video</a> demonstrates some of the implemented features in action.</p>

<hr />

<p><strong>FSL for Sesame 2-alpha-3 (2006-04-25)</strong></p>

<p>The FSL engine for <a href="http://www.openrdf.org/">Sesame 2</a> now works with version 2alpha3 instead of version 2alpha1. A build of the latest <a href="http://dev.w3.org/cvsweb/java/classes/org/w3c/IsaViz/fresnel/">source code</a> can be <a href="http://www.lri.fr/~pietriga/IsaViz/#fsl">downloaded</a>.</p>

<hr />

<p><strong>FSL for Sesame 1.2.2 (2005-12-06)</strong></p>

<p>In addition to the Sesame 2.0 implementation of FSL, there is now a Sesame 1.2.2 implementation written by Ryan Lee from project <a href="http://simile.mit.edu">Simile</a>. Available as both <a href="http://simile.mit.edu/repository/fsl/trunk/">source code</a> and a <a href="http://www.lri.fr/~pietriga/IsaViz/">JAR file</a>. Documentation for its use is <a href="http://www.lri.fr/~pietriga/2005/11/fsl/">available</a>.</p>

<hr />

<p><strong>Java FSL Documentation available (2005-11-18)</strong></p>

<p>Documentation for the three existing Java <a href="http://www.w3.org/2005/04/fresnel-info/fsl/"><abbr title="Fresnel Selector Language">FSL</abbr></a> engine implementations (for <a href="http://www.hpl.hp.com/semweb/index.html">Jena</a>, <a href="http://www.openrdf.org/">Sesame</a> and IsaViz) is now <a href="http://www.lri.fr/~pietriga/2005/11/fsl/">available</a>.</p>

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<div style="float:right">
  <a href="images/fslDebugger.png">
    <img src="images/fslDebugger_th.png" style="border-style:none" alt="IsaViz FSL Debugger screenshot" />
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<p><strong>FSL for Sesame 2.0 (2005-11-15)</strong></p>

<p>Fresnel comes with a companion proposal specifying a path language for RDF called <a href="http://www.w3.org/2005/04/fresnel-info/fsl/"><abbr title="Fresnel Selector Language">FSL</abbr></a>. FSL is a language for modeling traversal paths in RDF graphs, designed to address the specific requirements of a selector language for Fresnel. In addition to the two existing implementations of FSL for <a href="http://www.hpl.hp.com/semweb/index.html">Jena</a> and IsaViz' internal data structures, a third FSL engine is now available for <a href="http://www.openrdf.org/">Sesame 2-alpha 1</a>.</p>

<p><a href="images/fslDebugger.png">Screenshot</a> of the FSL visual debugger in IsaViz.</p>

<hr style="margin-top:1em;clear:both" />

<p><strong>Fresnel and FSL in IsaViz (2005-07-22)</strong></p>
<p><a href="http://www.w3.org/2005/04/fresnel-info/">Fresnel</a> is a simple <a href="http://www.w3.org/2005/04/fresnel-info/manual/">vocabulary</a> for specifying how to display RDF content. Compared to <a href="gss/gssmanual.html">GSS</a>, Fresnel is a browser- and format-independent RDF presentation language. It does not rely on any specific representation paradigm (as opposed to GSS which works on node-link diagram representations of RDF graphs). Fresnel will be supported in the upcoming version 3.0 of IsaViz. Fresnel comes with a companion proposal specifying a path language for RDF called <a href="http://www.w3.org/2005/04/fresnel-info/fsl/"><abbr title="Fresnel Selector Language">FSL</abbr></a>. FSL is a language for modeling traversal paths in RDF graphs, designed to address the specific requirements of a selector language for Fresnel. FSL is strongly inspired by <a href="http://www.w3.org/TR/xpath">XPath</a>, reusing many of its concepts and syntactic constructs while adapting them to RDF's <a href="http://www.w3.org/TR/rdf-concepts/">graph-based data model</a>. IsaViz already provides two working implementations of FSL available through <a href="http://dev.w3.org/cvsweb/java/classes/org/w3c/IsaViz/fresnel/">CVS</a> only, until the next build (August). The first implementation can be used by third party applications to query any in-memory <a href="http://www.hpl.hp.com/semweb/index.html">Jena</a> RDF model, while the second is based on IsaViz' internal data structure and is used to get a <a href="images/fslDebugger.png">graphical representation of the paths</a> selected by an FSL expression in an RDF graph (useful for learning and debugging FSL). Both implementations require <a href="http://www.antlr.org/">ANTLR</a> 2.7.5 or later.</p>

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<h2>Screenshots</h2>
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<td><a href="images/isv6.png"><img src="images/isv6_th.png" alt="screenshot6"/></a></td>

<td><a href="images/isv7.png"><img src="images/isv7_th.png" alt="screenshot7"/></a></td>
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<tr><td colspan="2"><p>More <a href="screenshots.html">screenshots</a> are available.</p></td></tr>
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<h2 id="download">Download</h2>

<p><strong>Development version (IsaViz 3.0-alpha, May 2007):</strong> an <a href="dist/isaviz-src-3.0-alpha1.zip">alpha release</a> is available for download with all dependencies included. It works with the latest version of GraphViz (currently 2.13). The latest source code is available through <a href="http://dev.w3.org/cvsweb/java/classes/org/w3c/IsaViz/">W3C&#8217;s public CVS repository</a>.</p>

<p><strong>Latest development version:</strong> 3.0-alpha1</p>
<table border="1">
<tr><td>Source distribution (zip file, 9.9 Mb)</td><td><a href="dist/isaviz-src-3.0-alpha1.zip">isaviz-src-3.0-alpha1.zip</a></td></tr>
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<p><strong>Latest stable version:</strong> 2.1</p>
<table border="1">
<tr><td>Binary distribution (zip file, 9.46 Mb)</td><td><a href="dist/isaviz-bin-2_1.zip">isaviz-bin-2_1.zip</a></td></tr>
<tr><td>Binary distribution (tarball, 9.42 Mb)</td><td><a href="dist/isaviz-bin-2_1.tar.gz">isaviz-bin-2_1.tar.gz</a></td></tr>
<tr><td>Source distribution (tarball, 9.98 Mb)</td><td><a href="dist/isaviz-src-2_1.tar.gz">isaviz-src-2_1.tar.gz</a></td></tr>
<tr><td colspan="2"><a href="dist/">Older versions</a></td></tr>
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<p><strong>Note:</strong> if you are using a download software agent like GetRight and are prompted for a password when requesting one of the above files, try disabling this software.</p>

<h3>Other Required Libraries</h3>

<p>You will also need to download <a href="http://www.research.att.com/sw/tools/graphviz/">graphviz/dot</a> for your specific platform (version 1.8.9 or later is mandatory if you are installing IsaViz 2). <strong>Note: some instances of version 1.10.0 had a bug that produced incomplete SVG files, but it has been corrected in subsequent releases </strong>(newer versions can be obtained on the <a href="http://www.graphviz.org/pub/graphviz/CURRENT">graphviz.org site</a>).</p>
<p>Finally, as IsaViz is implemented in Java, it requires a JVM (Java Virtual Machine) 1.3.0 or later (1.4.0 or later strongly recommended - see <a href="#bugs">Known problems</a>) since the GUI makes extensive use of Java2D which featured poor performances in JVM 1.2.x. The latest JVM from Sun can be downloaded at <a href="http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.4/">http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.4/</a></p>

<h3>Plug-Ins</h3>

<p>The Sesame plug-in makes it possible to read/write RDF data directly from/to a <a href="http://www.openrdf.org/">Sesame</a> server. It can be downloaded freely from the <a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/sesame/">Sesame Sourceforge Project page</a>.</p>

<h2>Documentation</h2>

<p><a href="install.html">Installation instructions</a> contain information on how to install and configure IsaViz, including requirements for additional software versions. <strong>You should read these as they contain important instructions regarding GraphViz/dot which is not included in the distribution.</strong></p>
<p>A <a href="usermanual.html">User Manual</a> describing all features of IsaViz is also available, as well as a <a href="gss/gssmanual.html">User Manual for Graph Stylesheets (GSS)</a>.</p>

<h2>Mailing List</h2>
<p>If you want to make comments, bug reports or simply ask a question, use the following mailing list: <a href="mailto:www-isaviz@w3.org">www-isaviz@w3.org</a>. To subscribe to the list, send an e-mail to <a href="mailto:www-isaviz-request@w3.org">www-isaviz-request@w3.org</a> with <strong>subscribe</strong> in the subject header. See <a href="http://www.w3.org/Mail/Request">http://www.w3.org/Mail/Request</a> for more details. An <a href="http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-isaviz/">archive</a> of messages sent to the list is available.</p>

<h2>Known Problems</h2>
<a name="bugs"/>
<ul>
<li>When using a JVM 1.3.x to run IsaViz, it may randomly freeze for no apparent reason. This problem seems to occur especially on slow systems (no matter the OS) and on all UNIX/Linux systems. It is somehow related to the Java2D <em>drawString</em> method when combined with affine transformations (used by the ZVTM to draw text in the zoomable window). It seems to have been fixed in JVM 1.4.0, so I suggest that people encountering this problem run IsaViz using a JVM 1.4.0 or later (it should completely disappear).</li>
<li>Due to a bug in GraphViz's SVG output, IsaViz is not able to fully load RDF models containing ampersand characters ('&amp;') in literal values. The bug was reported against GraphViz version 1.7.6 and has been fixed in version 1.8.1 (it is still present in version 1.7.12). The corresponding error message looks like this: <em>The parsing might not be complete (The file is probably not well-formed XML). Some nodes and edges might be missing from the graph because of an error (check error log) in file C:\Temp\isv20013.svg</em>. You can get a more complete error report by reading the error log.</li>
<li>The ZVTM uses a mouse cursor different from the system cursor, tightly coupled to ZVTM views and thus dependant on their refresh rate. It can therefore be difficult to control the mouse when browsing/editing big models. This difficult problem was addressed at the ZVTM level by implementing a specific XOR mode. This mode is available since version 0.8.0 of the library, which ships with IsaViz v1.1 and subsequent releases.</li>
</ul>

<h2>Acknowledgements</h2>
<p>IsaViz is developed by <a href="http://www.lri.fr/~pietriga/">Emmanuel Pietriga</a>.</p>

<p>The first version was developed in collaboration with <a href="http://www.xrce.xerox.com">Xerox Research Centre Europe</a> which also contributed XVTM, the ancestor of <a href="http://zvtm.sourceforge.net">ZVTM (Zoomable Visual Transformation Machine)</a> upon which IsaViz is built. IsaViz 2.0/GSS was developed during my postdoc funded by <a href="http://www.inria.fr/index.en.html">INRIA</a> and <a href="http://www.mit.edu">MIT</a>. As of October 2004, further development is handled by <a href="http://www-futurs.inria.fr">INRIA Futurs</a> project <a href="http://www-ihm.lri.fr/index.en.html">In Situ</a>. IsaViz also includes software developed by: </p>
<ul>
  <li><a href="http://www.hpl.hp.com/">HP Labs</a> (<a href="http://www.hpl.hp.com/semweb/index.html">Jena 2 Semantic Web Toolkit</a>)</li>
  <li><a href="http://www.apache.org">The Apache Software Foundation</a> (<a href="http://xml.apache.org/xerces2-j/index.html">Xerces Java 2</a>)</li>
</ul>
<p>and makes use of the <a href="http://www.research.att.com/sw/tools/graphviz/">GraphViz</a> library developed by <a href="http://www.research.att.com/">AT&amp;T Research</a>.</p>

<p>The <a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/sesame/">Sesame plug-in</a> is developed by <a href="http://aduna.biz/">Aduna</a>.</p>

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	  <td><p><em><small><a href="http://www.lri.fr/~pietriga/">Emmanuel Pietriga</a><br/>
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