This Ravel is unusable due to the radial display of axes: with 18 axes, the dimension names, selected values, (and in collapsed mode, the axes themselves) overwrite each other. But if there were a stacked view as well as a radial view, in stacked mode each axis would be easily discerned from the others.
Looking at examples from Tableau, lots of BI users have objects with that many dimensions. They might learn inside Ravel that it's silly to have that many dimensions, but to do so they have to continue using Ravel--and an initial display like this is a deterrent to continuing to use the program.
In general 6-8 axes seems about the maximum before the radial display starts to become more of a hindrance than a help.
I think we should add a vertical display of Ravels as an alternative to the radial display as a user-configurable option. So there would be three display modes: Icon, Radial (currently Editor Mode) and Vertical. The number of axes at which the default transited from Radial to Vertical would be a user-configurable option (with the program default set at say 8); and the right-click menu would have a Mode setting with 3 choices (Icon/Radial/Vertical) which the user could select for individual Ravels as well.
In the vertical mode the top axis would be equivalent to the right-pointing axis in the radial Ravel, and the second axis equivalent to the down-pointing axis. Axes would need to be dragable (sp?) as they are currently rotatable (?sp).
I think this is a dup...
Ticket moved from /p/minsky/ravel/293/