Current Status and Roadmap

[jacomyal]

Sigma.js: Current Status and Roadmap

Hey everyone,

This post is here to explain where sigma.js is at right now, what’s coming in v3, and what to expect for v4.

Current State of Sigma.js

Sigma.js v3 has been used in many projects for a while now, and overall, things are looking good. For example, we’re using it in Gephi Lite at @ouestware, and @arthur-bigeard-gdotv (who sponsored the developments of the v3) has been using it heavily in his software G.V(). I’m pretty confident in the quality of the new renderers code (which was the big change in v3). The only reason the beta tag is still there is that we never set a plan to remove it.

That said, there are still some tricky issues we haven’t fully solved yet:

• Opacity management
• Depth management
• Labels management

Right now, I don’t see an easy way to fix these without breaking things. So to keep things clear, I’ve set two new milestones.

Planning for v3 Release

The v3 milestone is mostly about small features that could help some users, as well as fixing the touch support.

I hope we’ll be able to wrap this up and remove the beta tag before the end of the year.

Looking Far Ahead to v4

The v4 milestone is for bigger, breaking changes. This will focus on rewriting the renderers API again with things like Order-independent Transparency (OIT), doing picking and rendering in the same step, and rendering edges and nodes in the same layer.

We’ll probably also move the labels API from Canvas to DOM + CSS, to make it easier to customize labels and allow interactions with them.

We’re planning to start this in 2025, but there’s no fixed schedule yet.

Moving Forward

We at @ouestware are really happy with where sigma.js is right now. A big thank you again to Arthur from G.V() for sponsoring this version! His support allowed us to clean up the codebase, make sigma.js more stable, and improve the documentation.

Now that things are in better shape, it’ll be easier to maintain the project and fix any bugs that come up.

While we’re not planning to break anything with major updates, new features will still be added regularly as separate packages. For example, we have plans for a cleaner and improved PNG exporter and a self-loops renderer.

Thanks again for your continued support!

[rahst12]

The progress v3 has made is great!

Definitely looking forward to v4 to see this issue resolved: #1427

Noted on issue #1427, we're interested to see if clustering/grouping of nodes will be supported, multi-node selection, and the ability to collapse/expand sections of the graph.

[jacomyal]

The two features you are expecting will probably not be developed directly as features of sigma. It is the same issue with nodes dragging: Sigma does not modify the graph state, it only reads it to render an image.

But it does not mean it is not possible to implement:

• Multi-node selections is very feasible right now, but it has to be done higher-level. It is implemented in Gephi-Lite, for instance:

sigma-multi-selection.webm

• I have not implemented collapse/expand in any application yet, but you can implement it using animateNodes. You can check the Layouts example story, to see how to use that helper

[jacomyal]

Quick update: Sigma finally hit v3.0.0 🎉