Overview

CharGer is a conceptual graph editor intended to support research projects and education. Its current version is primarily an editor to create visual display of graphs. It is deliberately and explicitly a research tool meant for conceptual graph researchers to explore implementation issues in conceptual graph interfaces. Using the software will require some familiarity with conceptual graphs, including knowing about concepts and relations, type hierarchies and type/referent pairs. Knowing about actors will also be very helpful. For information about conceptual graphs, see the Web page: http://conceptualgraphs.org

Features currently supported - version 3.5b

These features are currently supported (as of version 3.5b1 2005-11-30)

General

  • Simple installation procedure
  • Requires Java 1.5.0 or later.
  • Concepts, relations, actors, contexts, coreferent links are all supported for editing.
  • Type and relation hierarchies may be edited and saved.
  • Graphs may be exported to
    • Vector graphics formats: EPS, PDF, SVG and EMF
    • Raster (bitmap) graphics formats: GIF and PNG.
    • Other applications: OpenCG, Burmeister format, CGIF
  • Graphs may be labeled as to their intent (e.g., query, definition, etc.)
  • Contexts are supported, including nesting.
  • Negative contexts ("cuts") are supported
  • Graph joining on selected concepts
  • Graph matching (customizable by modifying matching scheme)
  • Make selected concepts generic

Editing

  • Any number of graph windows may be opened for editing.
  • Auto-save safeguards to help prevent losing a graph.
  • Copy/cut/paste of graphic elements within a graph and between graphs and to other applications
  • Undo/redo for most editing changes (limited to previous 10 changes)
  • Zoom in and out of a graph
  • Shortcut keystrokes to move and explicitly resize graph objects and contexts
  • Keystrokes to switch editing tools.
  • Ability to set user preferences and save them between sessions.
  • Some re-sizing of contexts, concepts, and relation nodes
  • Ability to remove referents from a selected set (crude generalization)
  • Custom colors for all graph objects, and the ability to set one’s own default color scheme.
  • Some ability to customize font displays.

Compatibility

Note: due to some problems with the current Conceptual Graph Interchange Format (CGIF) standard, CharGer's layout information is temporarily unavailable when using CGIF files. This problem is being worked on and will be fixed in the near future. If layout information is important to you, then use the CharGer format (*.cgx) for the graphs and simply save them as CGIF when you need to.

  • Portability to all major platforms (i.e., as portable as Java based on JDK 1.5)
  • Ability to save and retrieve graphs from files, in an XML format (*.cgx)
  • Saving of graphs in CGIF form according to a previous standard (courtesy of Finnegan Southey's Notio) - without layout information
  • (DISABLED) Importing of graphs in CGIF form (courtesy of Finnegan Southey's Notio) - without layout information
  • View the CGIF form of graphs (courtesy of Finnegan Southey's Notio) - without layout information
  • Paraphrase graph into English (other languages in preparation)
  • A Wordnet interface is included, where a synset (word-sense) entry can be added to any graph node (requires separate installation of Wordnet 2.0)

Actors/Databases

  • Activation of some built-in actors, including several primitive ones for arithmetic and elementary operations.
  • Visual animation facility for monitoring actors as they operate
  • Database access through actors, restricted to tab-separated text file "databases" at present.
  • Capability to automatically create a skeleton graph from a database suitable for providing database semantics.
  • A plugin interface whereby developers can create their own actors and add them to the CharGer.jar file.
  • A displaybar actor that will display a referent value in its own graphical display window.

Features not currently supported

The following features are not currently supported; plans are to implement them in the future.

  • Validation facilities (except for referent joining along co-referent lines)
  • Some more conceptual graph operations.
  • Support for type/relation/actor definitions in graphs

Why the name "CharGer"?

The University of Alabama in Huntsville has several sports teams nicknamed the "Chargers". A catchy name at that. Since the "CG" initials appear in it, it seemed a natural choice. And I like the image of forging ahead, attacking research problems and leading the way. So there it is.

Screen Shot (Windows)

Download / Installation

System Requirements

The minimum requirements for CharGer are:

  • Software supporting a Java Virtual Machine (VM) such as found in Sun's JDK or JRE, version 1.5 or higher. This can be obtained for free from java.sun.com.
  • A color monitor, 800 x 600 resolution or higher.

CharGer has been tested on Windows, LINUX and Mac OS X platforms.

Software

Using CharGer requires availability of a Java package, at the 1.5 level or higher. If you have previous versions of CharGer installed, your previous graph files are fully compatible with the new version, but you will have to copy your graphs into the folders expected by CharGer. Do the following:

  • Download the chargerXXX.zip file from the CharGer project at sourceforge.net
  • If not done automatically, un-zip the chargerXXX.zip file. That should create a chargerXXX folder enclosing a CharGer.jar file and sample files.
  • Send an email to to let me know you were here.
    • I'm always interested to hear about experiences with CharGer. Send me your favorite graphs!

The chargerXXX directory is referred to as your "top level" directory. Within it, there should be these files and folders:

  • CharGer.jar - Java archive (jar) containing the classes, images and default preferences needed to execute CharGer; these are platform independent at the JDK 1.5 version level. This file is ready to run as long as Java, or at least a Java Virtual Machine (VM) is installed on your computer. Also includes the Notio package, courtesy of Finnegan Southey.
  • Graphs - Where CharGer expects to find graphs by default. Can be opened and saved from/to any directory. Contains some sample graphs. You can change the default through the Preferences.
  • Databases - Where CharGer expects to find its tab-separated text databases for its actors. See below for more information. You can change this default through the Preferences.
  • Some XML files, useful if you're going to run Wordnet with CharGer.

Running CharGer

To run CharGer, you must have Java already installed on your machine. There are three options for running CharGer (four if you're using Mac OS X):

  • double-click the CharGer.jar file
  • run the .jar file from the command line
  • run CGMain using the .jar file as the classpath
  • (Mac OS X only): use the CharGerApp application (available from the author)

Double-click the CharGer.jar file: To quickly tell whether or not Java is already installed, just double-click on the CharGer.jar file and see if it runs. If it does, then you can probably skip the next paragraph. But make sure you're running at least version 1.5 or higher (use "java -version" to find out what version you have).

On a PC, this is called java.exe. You should be using Java's JDK 1.5 version or higher. It is possible that earlier versions will work in some cases, but since the JDK is freely available from java.sun.com it is probably a good idea to get it first and install it before running CharGer. Follow its instructions for installing Java, paying particular attention to the setting of your local PATH variable to include Java's binaries (e.g.,java.exe and jar.exe). To check whether Java is in your path (on a PC), either (i) type "set" at the command prompt and see if Java/JDK paths are in the PATH environment variable, or (ii) type "java -version" and see if there's a java version available.

From the command prompt on Windows or a shell prompt under LINUX, make the "top level" directory your current directory, and type the following:

java -jar CharGer.jar

CharGer's main class is called CGMain. If the above command doesn't work, on most systems, the following commands will also work:

cd ...\charger35b
java -cp CharGer.jar CGMain

CharGer has been tested extensively on a Mac, and to some extent under Windows 2000 and Linux (RedHat 7.3 version). Feedback to the author will be most appreciated.

Documentation

A manual is available in PDF form.

A technical reference on the implementation classes is available.

The release notes give some detailed information about the package.

Source Code: CharGer is an open source project in sourceforge. See its Project Page for more information.

Licensing

CharGer is a copyrighted work. All CharGer software files, its associated graphical files available within this software are protected under the Lesser GNU Public License (LGPL). If you are not familiar with the terms of this license, see http://www.opensource.org/licenses/lgpl-license.php (or many other places).

The author of the work is Harry S. Delugach (hereinafter "Author").

If the package is distributed with the Notio classes embedded, use of those classes is also governed by the LGPL.

Information provided in this document, the manual, and the CharGer software is provided "AS IS" without warranty of any kind, either express or implied, including but not limited to the implied warranties of merchantability, fitness, for a particular purpose and freedom from infringement. The Author disclaims all warranties with regard to this software, including all implied warranties of merchantability and fitness, in no event shall the author, UAH or any of its sponsors be liable for any special, indirect or consequential damages or any damages whatsoever resulting from loss of use, data or profits, whether in an action of contract, negligence or other tortuous action, arising out of or in connection with the use or performance of this software. Reference in CharGer to any specific commercial products, process, service, manufacturer, or company does not constitute its endorsement or recommendation by anyone.

Maintained by Harry S. Delugach
Email:

This page last modified on December 28, 2005