Visualizing Data: Self-Documenting Ant files : Page 7

Ant Visualization Wrap-Up
You've seen a variety of techniques for visualizing an Ant build file, each of which provides a unique perspective of your Ant source code. One reason for writing this article was to explain and examine these very practical techniques, but another was to instill the notion that the way you visualize something has a dramatic effect on what you can do with it, how you use it, and indeed, how you even think about it.

The table below lists all the techniques discussed in this article, giving you a side-by-side comparison. No one technique is best so you may end up using a variety.

Ant Visualization Techique Wrap-Up
Characteristic \ Technique	IE	PrettyBuild	Ant Help	AntDoc	Ant2Svg	Grand
Shows Source	Y			Y		Y
Includes Dynamic GUI		Y		Y		Y
Executes Targets		Y		Y
Identifies Public Targets			Y			Y
Identifies Default Target	Y	Y	Y			Y
Shows Target Descriptions	Y	Y	Y	Y		Y
Shows Connections		Y		Y	Y	Y
Shows Conditions	Y			Y		Y
Shows Task Usage				Y
Summarizes All Targets on One Page		Y	Y	Y	Y	Y
Renders Graphical Output					Y	Y
Links to Ant Documentation				Y
Supports Filtering						Y
Runs in a Browser	Y	Y		Y

Author's Note: See Wikipedia's entry for Information Graphics for some great general background. Also, I highly recommend this periodic table of visualization categories to see a huge number of visualization samples. You can hover over any one with your mouse to see details.

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