TagCloud

This project creates a Java Swing Component that shows a set of words in a Component. Each word is given a color and size based on a weighting. You can use this in a Swing UI to visualise a collection of words by importance in 2 dimensions.

See also the Presentation and the Project Page

Try it out

If you can still run Java Web Start, click on the link

Otherwise Download the JAR and run the sample program as follows:

java  -jar ./TagCloud.jar

How to use it

See the Javadoc for the classes and methods: Javadoc

To create the component, create a List of WeightedWord objects. Each WeightedWord has a String and two weights, one for the size and the other for the color. The weights can be the same if you want or one can be constant. Then create a TagCloud object and associate the List with the TagCloud. Then add the TagCloud to your Swing Container:

List<WeightedWordInterface> weightedWordList = new ArrayList<>();
weightedWordList.add( new WeightedWord( "Word1", 10, 50 ) );
weightedWordList.add( new WeightedWord( "Word2", 60, 20 ) );
TagCloud tagCloud = new TagCloud();
tagCloud.setWordsList( weightedWordList );

To become more interactive you can add a TagClickListener to the TagCloud and will receive a WeighedWord in the tagClicked callback if the user clicks on a word:

tagCloud.addTagClickListener( new TagClickListener() {

  @Override
  public void tagClicked( WeightedWordInterface weightedWord ) {
    doTagClicked( weightedWord );
  }
} );

public void doTagClicked( WeightedWordInterface weightedWord ) {
  System.out.println( String.format( "The word: %s was clicked", weightedWord.getWord() ) );
}

See the included sample program for a worked example.

Customisation

The library is designed so that you can customise the fonts and the colors. Here is an example of famous people and their BMI index:

The data on the people came from some casual research on the Internet. See the source code People.java

To get the colors to change according to the BMI of the person you have to tell TagCloud to use a special ColorProvider. Some sample ColorProviders are bundled in the code. See the Javadoc.

tagCloud.setColorProvider( new BMIColorProvider() );

If you dig into the code you will notice that some ColorProviders extend the ColorInterpolator which allows the extending class to supply an array of colors between which the ColorInterpolator will interpolate an appropriate hue:

public class SampleGradientColors extends ColorInterpolator {
    public final static Color[] SAMPLE_GRADIENT_COLORS = { 
        new Color( 0x099716 ), new Color( 0x18c928 ),
        new Color( 0x36e410 ), new Color( 0x64e410 ), 
        new Color( 0xa1e70c ), new Color( 0xc3d000 ), 
        new Color( 0xe8e410 ), new Color( 0xdcaf1e ),
        new Color( 0xe87514 ), new Color( 0xed723b ) };

    @Override
    public Color[] getColorPoints() {
        return SAMPLE_GRADIENT_COLORS;
    }
}

Similarly, to customise the fonts used to render the tags, supply a FontProvider to the TagCloud:

tagCloud.setFontProvider( new SansSerifFontProvider() );

Some FontProviders are supplied with the library. See the Javadoc

License

TagCloud is an Open Source project by Richard Eigenmann. It is licensed under the LGPL v3 license.

Feedback

Please feel free to contact the Author with comments, suggestions, improvements, pull requests or encouragement: Richard Eigenmann

mailto:richard.eigenmann@gmail.com

ToDo: Jlink Section

The project was one of my first to use Modularity. It probably needs a bit of cleaning up here.

/usr/java/zulu17.32.13-ca-jdk17.0.2-linux_x64/bin/jlink \
--module-path tagcloud.samplegui/build/libs:tagcloud.library/build/libs \
--add-modules my.samplegui \
--output build/jlink/

build/jlink/bin/java --list-modules

build/jlink/bin/java --module my.samplegui

/usr/java/zulu17.32.13-ca-jdk17.0.2-linux_x64/bin/jlink \
--module-path tagcloud.samplegui/build/libs:tagcloud.library/build/libs \
--add-modules my.samplegui \
--output build/jlink/ \
--launcher run-samplegui=my.samplegui

/usr/java/zulu17.32.13-ca-jdk17.0.2-linux_x64/bin/jlink \
--module-path tagcloud.samplegui/build/libs:tagcloud.library/build/libs \
--add-modules my.samplegui \
--output build/jlink/ \
--launcher run-samplegui=my.samplegui

/usr/java/zulu17.32.13-ca-jdk17.0.2-linux_x64/bin/jlink --list-plugins

rm -rf build/jlink

/usr/java/zulu17.32.13-ca-jdk17.0.2-linux_x64/bin/jlink \
--module-path tagcloud.samplegui/build/libs:tagcloud.library/build/libs \
--add-modules my.samplegui \
--output build/jlink/ \
--launcher run-samplegui=my.samplegui \
--compress 2

"c:\Program Files (x86)\jdk-17.0.1\bin\jpackage" ^
--type exe ^
--input . ^
--name JPO ^
--description "Java Picture Organizer" ^
--vendor "Richard Eigenmann" ^
--app-version 0.17 ^
--main-jar Jpo-all.jar ^
--icon favicon.ico ^
--java-options '--enable-preview' ^
--win-shortcut ^
--win-menu ^
--verbose ^
--dest c:\Users\richa\Desktop

/usr/java/zulu17.32.13-ca-jdk17.0.2-linux_x64/bin/jpackage \
--module-path tagcloud.samplegui/build/libs:tagcloud.library/build/libs \
--module my.samplegui \
--type rpm \
--name TagCloud \
--description "Tag Cloud" \
--vendor "Richard Eigenmann" \
--app-version 0.0.6 \
--verbose \
--dest build/rpm/ \
--linux-menu-group "Richi's Apps" \
--linux-shortcut \
--install-dir /usr

ToDo

• Update Gradle for 2025
• Package this as a proper library
• Change the first example to be population vs per capita income