SUMMON 1.8.7 SUMMON is a python extension module that provides rapid prototyping of 2D visualizations. By heavily relying on the python scripting language, SUMMON allows the user to rapidly prototype a custom visualization for their data, without the overhead of a designing a graphical user interface or recompiling native code. By simplifying the task of designing a visualization, users can spend more time on understanding their data. SUMMON is designed to be a fast interface for developing interactive scene graphs for OpenGL. Although python libraries already exist for accessing OpenGL, python is relatively slow for real-time interaction with large visualizations (trees with 100,000 leaves, sparse matrices with a million non-zeros, etc.). Therefore, with SUMMON all real-time interaction is handled with compiled native C++ code (via extension module). Python is only executed in the construction and occasional interaction with the visualization. This arrangement provides the best of both worlds. SUMMON 1.8.7 comes with the following features: * a demo large sparse matrix visualizer (ideal for visualizing clusterings) * a demo tree visualizer * Python C++ extension module * Fast OpenGL graphics * Drawing arbitrary points, lines, polygons, text with python scripting * Binding inputs (keyboard, mouse, hotspots) to any python function * Separate threads for python and graphics (allows use of python prompt and responsive graphics at the same time) * Transparently handles graphics event loop, scrolling, zooming, text layout (auto-clipping, scaling, alignment), and click detection; allowing you to focus on viewing your data * SVG output (also GIF/PNG/JPG/etc via ImageMagick) * Cross-platform (Linux, Windows, OS/X) * And lots of examples for how to prototype your own custom 2D visualizations Web site and download: http://people.csail.mit.edu/rasmus/summon/