Sparkline

History

In 1762 Laurence Sterne used typographical devices in his sixth volume of The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman to illustrate his narrative proceeding: "These were the four lines I moved through my first, second, third, and fourth volumes,–".

The 1888 monograph describing the 1883 eruption of Krakatoa shows barometric signatures of the event obtained at various stations around the world in the same fashion, but in separate plates (VII & VIII), not within the text.

Edward Tufte documented a compact style in 1983 called "intense continuous time-series". He introduced the term sparkline in 2006 for "small, high resolution graphics embedded in a context of words, numbers, images", which are "data-intense, design-simple, word-sized graphics". Later in 2020, Tufte attributed the idea to Donald Knuth's "METAFONTbook".

The first software sparkline was programmed in 1999 by Peter Zelchenko. He introduced "an inline-chart" feature for Mike Medved's QuoteTracker. TD Ameritrade later discontinued QuoteTracker.

On May 7, 2008, Microsoft employees filed a patent application for the implementation of sparklines in Microsoft Excel 2010. The application was published on November 12, 2009, prompting Tufte to express concerns about patent breadth and non-novelty. On 23 January, 2009, MultiRacio Ltd. published an OpenOffice.org Calc extension named "EuroOffice Sparkline". On March 3, 2022, Tomaž Vajngerl implemented sparklines in LibreOffice Calc version 7.4, including support for importing sparklines from the OOXML Workbook format.

Usage

Sparklines are frequently used in line with text. For example: The Dow Jones Industrial Average for February 7, 2006 [[File:Sparkline dowjones new.svg|alt=sparkline which illustrates the fluctuations in the Down Jones index on February 7, 2006|100px]].

The sparkline should be about the same height as the text around it. Tufte offers some useful design principles for the sizing of sparklines to maximize their readability.

References

References

1. Laurence Sterne, Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Ann Ward (vol. 1–2), Dodsley (vol. 3–4), Becket & DeHondt (vol. 5–9), 1759-1767
2. Symons, G. J., Judd, J. W., Strachey, S. R., Wharton, W. J. L., Evans, F. J., Russell, F. A. R., ... & Whipple, G. M. (1888). The eruption of Krakatoa: And subsequent phenomena. Trübner & Company. Plate VII
3. Tufte, Edward (1983). The Visual Display of Quantitative Information. Quoted in "ET Work on Sparklines". Retrieved from http://www.edwardtufte.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=000AIr.
4. Bissantz & Company GmbH. "Sparklines: Another masterpiece of Edward Tufte".
5. Edward Tufte. (November 2013). "Sparkline theory and practice". Edward Tufte forum.
6. Edward Tufte. (2006). "Beautiful Evidence". Graphics Press.
7. "Donald Knuth in The METAFONTbook, 1986, uses a letterform matrix 100pt by 10pt to show data with a "skyline texture." Knuth has invented everything. The history of sparkline-like inline graphics for 800 years".
8. "Medved QuoteTracker screenshot". Internet Archive.
9. "WaybackMachine snapshot from October 13, 1999, see "Screen Shots"".
10. Capadisli, Sarven. (October 18, 2016). "Sparqlines: SPARQL to Sparkline".
11. Carey, Theresa W.. (Nov 26, 2016). "Medved Revives; Sneak Peek at StockNews.com".
12. (2009-11-12). "Sparklines in the grid".
13. (2009-07-17). "Sparklines in Excel".
14. (2009-11-19). "Microsoft makes patent claim for Sparklines".
15. "EuroOffice Sparkline {{!}} OpenOffice.org repository for Extensions".
16. Vajngerl, Tomaž. (2022-03-08). "Sparklines in Calc".