The spine: segment → layout → encode → render

Every lexograph preset is the same four steps. Understanding them lets you compose your own figure when no preset fits, and shows why the package stays general.

1. Segment

Turn the text into an ordered list of units — characters, tokens, or sentences.

from lexograph import load_demo_text, segment

text = load_demo_text()
units = segment(text, unit="sentences")   # or "tokens", or "chars"

The sentence splitter is offline and abbreviation-aware by default; pass punkt=True for NLTK Punkt.

2. Layout

Give each unit a position in 2-D or 3-D space. The layouts are pure coordinate generators:

from lexograph import walk_layout, rendered_widths

steps = rendered_widths(units)          # the width-step
coords = walk_layout(steps)             # (N+1, 2) vertices

Other layouts: spiral_layout, walk3d_layout, linear_layout, and the grid builders in lexograph.layout.recurrence and lexograph.layout.dispersion.

3. Encode

Map per-unit attributes onto visual channels. This is the data contract: every channel is fed by a plain per-unit array. The numbers can come from anywhere.

from lexograph import normalize_size, categorical_colors, lengths

sizes = normalize_size(lengths(units), lo=0.5, hi=6.0)
colours = categorical_colors([i // 8 for i in range(len(units))])

Built-in scalars (lengths, positions, frequencies) need nothing installed. The optional lexograph.analyze layer produces arrays of exactly the same shape — PageRank for size, community for colour — so swapping in semantics is a one-liner and the core never learns where the numbers came from.

4. Render

Draw it. Every renderer returns a matplotlib.figure.Figure and never calls show().

from lexograph import render_path

fig = render_path(coords, colors=colours, linewidth=2.0)
fig.savefig("walk.png", dpi=150)   # or display inline in Jupyter

Why this matters

Because the seam between steps is a plain array, someone with no analysis stack can draw a spiral or a walk from length, frequency, or their own column — and someone with embeddings, a kenon network, or chronowords shift scores can feed the same channels. That is what makes lexograph a general package rather than an internal tool. Each preset is just a convenient path through these four steps.