Annogram: An Annotative Grammar Of Graphics Extension

Annogram
๐Ÿ“… August 8, 2025โœ๏ธ Md Dilshadur Rahman, Md. Rahat-Uz-Zaman, Andrew M McNutt, Paul Rosen๐Ÿ“š IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics๐ŸŽฏ article
    Annotations are central to effective data communication, yet most visualization tools treat them as secondary constructs โ€” manually defined, difficult to reuse, and loosely coupled to the underlying visualization grammar. We propose a declarative extension to Wilkinsonโ€™s Grammar of Graphics that reifies annotations as first-class design elements, enabling structured specification of annotation targets, types, and positioning strategies. To demonstrate the utility of our approach, we develop a prototype extension called Vega-Lite Annotation. Through comparison with eight existing tools, we show that our approach enhances expressiveness, reduces authoring effort, and enables portable, semantically integrated annotation workflows.
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