Data Navigator Inspector

This is part of the Data Navigator project. The inspector is a passive visualization tool that draws a data-navigator structure object as a force-directed node-edge graph. As you navigate through a chart using data-navigator's standard keyboard controls, the inspector's focus indicator follows your position in the graph.

Keyboard Controls

Command	Key
Enter the structure	Activate the "Enter navigation area" button
Exit	Esc
Left (backward along category)	←
Right (forward along category)	→
Up (backward along metric)	↑
Down (forward along metric)	↓
Drill down to child	Enter
Drill up to parent	W or J

Simple Example

Press the Enter navigation area button in the chart area below, then use arrow keys, enter, and W/J keys to navigate. Watch the focus indicator move through the inspector graph on the right.

Bar Chart

Structure Inspector

How Navigation Works

This chart has two dimensions: a categorical dimension (cat) and a numerical dimension (num). Each dimension creates a different way to move through the data.

Numerical dimension (up/down). Pressing Enter from the num dimension drills down into data points sorted from lowest to highest value. Use ↑ and ↓ to move between data points in order of their numerical value. Since this dimension uses terminal extents, movement stops at the first and last values.

Categorical dimension (left/right). Pressing Enter from the cat dimension drills down into divisions grouped by category. One group ("bork") contains a single data point while the other ("meow") contains three. Use ← and → to move between divisions. Since this dimension uses circular extents, movement wraps around from the last division back to the first. If you navigate to the "bork" child, since it is alone, ← and → will have no effect (because there are no siblings that also have the same category).

At the child-most level, all four arrow keys are available regardless of which dimension you drilled down from. ← and → move across the categorical dimension while ↑ and ↓ move across the numerical dimension. This means you can freely explore data points in any direction once you reach the bottom of this dual-hierarchy. Press W or J to drill back up to a parent.