socnetv - Man Page

Visualize and analyze social networks

Synopsis

socnetv < file.net >  

socnetv -V | --version

socnetv -h | --help

Description

Social Network Visualiser (SocNetV) is a cross-platform, user-friendly application for the analysis and visualization of Social Networks.

With SocNetV you can:

Features

These are the main features and routines of SocNetV:

Documentation

The documentation, licensed under the Free Documentation License (FDL), is available at <http://socnetv.org/docs/index.html>

Options

--version | -V

Displays the version of the program.

--help | -H

Displays a short help message.

file.net

The name of the file you want to open.

Usage

SocNetV has a simple Graphical User Interface (GUI). The biggest (right) part of the window is occupied by a virtual "canvas" where network nodes and edges appear. To the left of it, there is a dock with 4 buttons (add/remove node, add/remove link) and some LCDs which display statistics. On the top of the window, you will find the menu with all commands and options, and at the bottom there is a status bar, where messages appear.

To create a new node, you can double-click on the canvas or click on the "add node" button.

To create a new link, you can middle-click on the source node and then on the target node.  Alternatively, you can click on the "add link" button from the dock.

You move a node by left-clicking and dragging it. When you right-click on a node, a context menu appears. From there you can remove the node, change its color, label, size as well as its shape. SocNetV supports many kinds of node shapes, i.e rectangles, diamond, ellipse, circle, etc. A similar menu  appears when you right click on a link.

Supported Formats

The default file format for reading and saving social network is GraphML. Nevertheless, SocNetV can import various other formats (see below).

You can load GraphML files by clicking on menu File > Load. To load other network formats, use the menu File ->Import.

SocNetV supports the following network data formats:

Layout algorithms

SocNetV also supports a variety of layout algorithms, such as spring-embedder (i.e. energy based) and centralities-based. The latter reposition all nodes in circles of different radiuses (i.e. more central nodes appear near the centre of the canvas) or in levels of different height (more central nodes appear near to the top).

You can apply layout algorithms from the menu Layout or by clicking on the checkboxes on the dock. Not all layouts appear on the dock, though.

Known Bugs

The network file parser is not 100% trustworthy. For instance, complicated Pajek or GraphML files can crash the application.

Antialiasing is on by default. This slows down the application when the network has many nodes and edges. You can disable antialiasing by pressing F8 .

Author

Dimitris Kalamaras <dimitris.kalamaras@gmail.com>

Bug Reports

Report bugs to https://github.com/socnetv/app/issues

In order to send a meaningful bug report, run socnetv from a terminal, press F9 and repeat the steps which lead to bug manifestation. SocNetV will be printing debug messages on the standard output (the terminal in Linux).

Availability

The latest version of this program can be found at <http://socnetv.org>.  It is distributed in source code and binary packages for Linux distributions, image disks for Mac OS X and zipped executables for Windows.

To get the latest development version use:  git clone -b develop --single-branch https://github.com/socnetv/app.git socnetv

See Also

graphviz(1)

Info

Mar 2019 SocNetV-3.1 Social Network Visualiser