Skip to content

Architecture

"Architecture" means two different things for GlyphViz, and they have two different answers.

Behavior and data model — what a topology does, how a scene graph cascades transforms from parent to child, what a node CSV row means — is inherited. GlyphViz targets the ANTz/GaiaViz lineage as a foundation and is explicit about it: the Golden-Master Validation harness exists specifically to keep GlyphViz's rendering math conformant with that lineage, and the ANTz & GaiaViz Format Notes page tracks the specific places the two upstream formats diverge from each other so GlyphViz can target the right one in the right context.

Code and technology — the actual implementation — is not inherited, because it couldn't be. GlyphViz is written from scratch in Python, and GlyphViz Web is a from-scratch TypeScript/Three.js rewrite for the browser. Neither shares a line of source with ANTz or GaiaViz. The Package Boundary page covers how GlyphViz's own Python codebase is split — glyphviz_core, glyphviz_gl, glyphviz_xr — which is a GlyphViz-specific decision, not one inherited from anywhere.

Both things are true at once: GlyphViz owes ANTz and GaiaViz its data contract and its design philosophy, and owes them nothing in the codebase itself.

What GlyphViz inherited

ANTz, created by Dr. Dave Warner and Shane Saxon, established the ideas GlyphViz treats as bedrock: a portable CSV node format where a spreadsheet row is a 3D object, a parent→child scene graph where transforms cascade down the tree, and — the idea that makes this a hierarchical visualizer rather than a 3D scatter plot tool — topologies, where a parent's shape decides what a child's translate_x/y/z even mean (longitude/latitude on a sphere, ring position on a torus, plain Cartesian offsets elsewhere). That reinterpretation-by-context is the single idea GlyphViz's entire visual model is built around, and it isn't GlyphViz's invention.

GaiaViz, developed by Shane Saxon and Lucas Erickson as ANTz's commercial successor, extended that format with new topologies, animation channels, and its own np_ ("neural physics") naming convention reflecting GaiaViz's own underlying architecture — an architecture GlyphViz doesn't share and doesn't claim to. Where GaiaViz's documented conventions go further than or diverge from ANTz's, GlyphViz treats GaiaViz's reference documentation as the best available account of behavior it can consult (GlyphViz has no access to GaiaViz's actual source, so nothing undocumented is ever assumed), while still authoring its own data under a gv_ prefix rather than borrowing the np_ name for something with no shared architecture. See ANTz & GaiaViz Format Notes for exactly where that line gets drawn.

Both ANTz and GaiaViz are console-native, single-scene desktop tools built around their own rendering pipelines predating GlyphViz by years — everything about how GlyphViz gets pixels on screen (Python, Qt, PyOpenGL's legacy fixed-function pipeline today, WebGL/Three.js in the browser, OpenXR on a headset) is a GlyphViz-era decision made independently, not a port of anything from that lineage.

What's original to GlyphViz

Past matching the foundation, GlyphViz has gone in directions neither ANTz nor GaiaViz documents: TOPO_PLOT and TOPO_SURFACE for line/GPS/oscilloscope data and deformable heightfields, the Spiral topology (independently derived — no GaiaViz source was available to crib from), World Grid (type=6) geo-registered scenes with a flat-plate/globe toggle, the full Channels bindable-attribute set, drag-and-drop scene loading, Fetch Basemap map-imagery download, and a from-scratch OpenXR VR spike reusing the exact same glyphviz_core kernel the desktop app runs on. None of that is ANTz's or GaiaViz's to credit — it's covered under "Shipped" in the project's own feature-status tracking, not here.

Pages in this section

  • Package Boundary — why GlyphViz's own Python code splits into glyphviz_core / glyphviz_gl / glyphviz_xr, and what that boundary buys.
  • Golden-Master Validation — how GlyphViz's rendering math is checked for conformance with the ANTz/GaiaViz scene-graph model.
  • ANTz & GaiaViz Format Notes — the specific, documented places GaiaViz's conventions moved on from ANTz's, and which one GlyphViz targets where.