KoalaRainbow :: README

Introduction

KoalaRainbow is a visualization engine for MovableType. It consists of a query language that allows users a good deal of freedom to construct the data they wish to visualize, and a procedural mechanism for visualizing that data. At some point the query language may be exposed so that it can be used to output text via tags, but that has not happened yet.

KoalaRainbow's name is derived from a Sealab 2021 quote by Captain Murphy: "It's like a koala crapped a rainbow in my brain."

Please consult the other documentation available for a more thorough explanation of KoalaRainbow's functionality and how to use it.

Features

XPath-like query language supporting arbitrary queries with partial evaluation and constraint propagation of expressions to DB queries.
Support for client-side image map generation.
Circles/Ellipses, Squares/Rectangles, and Lines!
Colors!
Possibly Pretty! (see examples)

Requirements

KoalaRainbow requires the presence of Image::Magick (home). Although some effort has been made to try and allow for multiple rendering engines to be used, ImageMagick is the only one currently supported at this time. Since it is the full-featured choice for thumbnail generation for MT, hopefully you will already have it available.

If you want to use the "Query lab" and see the output of your queries, you will need Data::Dump, but it is not a requirement for successful operation of the system.

KoalaRainbow requires MovableType 3.0.

Installation

KoalaRainbow is tarred up so that if you untar it in the root of your mt installation, everything should go in the right place. (The root of your mt installation is where mt.cfg and mt.cgi live.) It should expand like so:

plugins/
  koalarainbow.pl
  krgui.cgi
extlib/
  OnlyTheWind/
    KoalaRainbow/
       *lots of stuff*
docs/
  koalarainbow/
     *lots of stuff*
tmpl/
  koalaRainbow/
     *some stuff*

If you wish to copy these manually from a staging dir, go wild, but you should be safe extracting in the root of the install.

Licensing

KoalaRainbow: Copyright 2004, Andrew Sutherland.

KoalaRainbow is licensed under the LGPL. A copy of the LGPL is included in COPYING.html.

Development

Patches will be gladly accepted. All patches must be under the LGPL or a compatible license. There are no plans to ever release KoalaRainbow after this point as anything other than under the LGPL, so LGPL'd patches are fine.

Homepage / Getting New Versions

My personal website is at www.onlythewind.org. I haven't yet hit upon a permanent scheme for the layout of the site, but for now you can probably assume that you can find news at www.onlythewind.org/mt/ and downloads at www.onlythewind.org/koalarainbow/files/.

Author Contact Info

I can be reached at concat('sombrero', $bam, 'alum', $kapow, 'mit', $kapow, 'edu'), where $bam is '@' and $kapow is '.'.