[PLUG] posted sig2dot v0.26 to freshmeat

[Darxus@chaosreigns.com]

Incase anybody is curious, I posted the current version of sig2dot to
freshmeat.net, apparently for the first time, last night.

This is the program I use to convert the output of "gpg
--no-default-keyring --keyring ./phillylinux.gpg --list-sigs" to a .dot
file which can then be rendered into a graph by neato (graphviz), for the
keysignings (http://www.phillylinux.org/keys/).  

This came after overhauling the sig2dot web page
(http://www.chaosreigns.com/code/sig2dot/).  I think it looks a lot
prettier now, and includes thumbnails from, and links to, several sites
that use sig2dot.  


I actually started working on a replacement for neato on August 26th,
and finally got it to do node layout the way I wanted last night.
It is reading node labels and connections (lines/edges) from .dot files.
I have actually successfully graphed the phillylinux keyring with it,
but it still needs a lot of work to be pretty enough to use instad of
neato for the plug graphs.  I started talking to the folks who made neato
to make sure there isn't some way to graph the way I want with neato.

There's a few reasons I wanted to write a replacement for neato:

1) Optimul edge length of zero - in graphs like this, lines are, for some
reason, referred to as edges.  In a graph rendered by neato, every node
wants to be some fixed distance from every other node, and everything
shifts around until they're all as close as possible to that distance
from every other node they're linked to.  I want them to all want to be
right on top of every node they're connected to (while being pushed away
from every node).  I think the math is more pure and results in graphs that
better represent the relationships.  This is specifically what I've been
talking to the authors of neato about.  

2) Animation:  Every gpg signature has a date stamp.  I have used this
information to add the ability to sig2dot to render a graph as it would
have looked on a past date.  I believe I should be able to animate the
process of new keys (nodes) and signatures (edges) being added, so you
can watch the development of the plug keyring / web of trust over time.
The folks who wrote neato are interested in this too (talked to them
about it a little before), but it can't currently do that.

3) 3D:  I believe I can fairly easily extrapolate what I've done in 2D into
3D, and output a .pov file to be 3D raytraced by povray - each node being a
beautifully shaded raytraced sphere.  I don't know if this will come out at
all useable, but I definately think it's worth trying.

-- 
"The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the
human mind to correlate all its contents."
http://www.ChaosReigns.com

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