Ink is an interactive visual tool for exploring correspondence data developed within the Athanasius project. It provides three different views on the data:

• a map showing the path of each letter (source/destination)
• a time-based stacked bar for comparing the composition of correspondent groups over time
• an alluvial diagram highlighting the relations between three (or more) dimensions of the data related to correspondents

The three visualizations are interrelated: by choosing a specific dimension or value in the alluvial diagram it will be possible to see its distribution over time, in the stacked bar.

###Data model

Three main data collections (as JSON files into /data folder) are used:

light.json
Contains the collection of letters in a lightweight format:

[	{	a : "authorId",	d : "destinationId",	s : "sourceId",	r : "recipientId",	t : "year",	id : "letterId"	},	... ] 

people.json
Contains the collection of persons in a single JSON object (keys are persons'id)

{	"personId":	{	"Name": "...",	"Gender": "…",	"Milieu1": "…",	"Milieu2": "…",	"Milieu3": "…",	"Nationality": "...",	"Id": "personId"	},	... } 

places.json
Similar to places.json, contains the collection of places in a single JSON object (keys are persons'id)

{	"placeId":	{	"City": "",	"PlaceName": "",	"Country": "",	"Region": "",	"FullName": "",	"_id": "",	"InLocationDB": ""	},	... } 

###Technology

From a technological point of view, Ink is a web applications using PHP and Python for processing and serving the data and JavaScript (d3 and jQuery libraries) for the visualizations and the UI.