Programmer Musings

SVG Sparklines in Perl

For the last few weeks, I've been working on a Perl module for creating Sparklines* in SVG. The original purpose of the project was a demonstration of working with SVG from the Perl programming language. It was intended to be an example in a talk I was going to give for our local Perl Mongers group. As usual, it has grown to be much more than that. (I still hope to get back to that talk.<shrug/>)

In the process, I've been exploring a few other ideas that were not part of the original plan. I planned to develop the module as I usually do and then release it to CPAN. I released an early version (something I normally do not do) and got feedback from an interested developer within 24 hours. This was on a barely functional module.

Based on that email exchange and conversations with some local developers, this is turning into a much more robust and flexible module than originally intended. The interface has improved dramatically. There will be more types than originally planned. There are more ways to configure the look of the generated Sparklines. There is now a cookbook explaining how to generate different effects.

I've also put the module on Github as svg-sparkline. Although I've been playing with git off and on for a few months now, this is the first time I've tried to use with it seriously.

Unlike many of my past projects, this one requires more visual design thought than I normally need. In a way, this quick, little project has turned into a way to experiment with several new ideas and skills at once. We'll have to see how this one turns out.

Note:
* A Sparkline is an intense, word-sized graphic intended to convey useful information inline within text. The concept was proposed by Edward Tufte in his book Beautiful Evidence. For more on sparklines, see Tufte's article on the subject.