Components Chart
word-cloud
Spiral-packed word cloud — items sized by weight.
Use for qualitative summaries — retrospective themes, survey verbatims. Word size encodes frequency or weight; not a precise data viz.
When to use
- Qualitative themes at a glance. Retrospective summaries, survey verbatims, theme extraction, sentiment scans. The cloud lands what the corpus is about; the silhouette and the biggest words are the read.
- Weight is approximate, not exact. Word size encodes relative frequency or weight, but the eye reads 'biggest' and 'second biggest' before any precise ratio. Reach for word-cloud when the rank matters more than the count. A 'size = frequency' key sits in the right rail to make the encoding explicit.
- Eight to twenty items. Below eight the spiral looks bare and the layout wastes the canvas. Past about twenty the smallest words become unreadable. Trim the long tail or cap the cloud at a 'top 15' before authoring.
When not to use
- Precise comparisons. If the audience needs to know that 'manifest' is 1.6× 'function', the spiral packing actively misleads. Use
progressor a bar chart where the eye can compare lengths directly. - Two or three words. A three-word cloud is a list with extra steps. Use
statsfor a metric row orbig-numberfor a single weighted headline. - Multi-word phrases. Each li should be a single token. Multi-word phrases blow out the layout and crowd the spiral; if your data is phrases, normalise to keywords first or use
quotefor verbatim text.
Slots
| Slot | Selector | Required | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
title | h2 | yes | Slide heading framing the cloud. |
words | ul > li | yes | One li per word. Format: word weight`` where weight is any positive number — a frequency count, a 1–5 rating, a percentage. Words are sized and coloured RELATIVE to each other: the lightest maps to small/muted, the heaviest to the hero size/accent. |
Anatomy
┌─────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ header │
│ Weighted words heading │
│ │
│ alpha BIG_TERM beta │
│ emergent HUGE │
│ minor medium │
│ tiny LARGE keyword │
│ footer 1/19 │
└─────────────────────────────────────────┘Variants
constellation — Constellation — airy, two-tone
A wider size spread with no rotation — words sit like a constellation with generous spacing. Built for a small, high-impact vocabulary; keep it to six or eight terms.
<!-- _class: word-cloud constellation -->
## What this branch named, by weight.
- component `5`
- manifest `4`
- function `3`
- form `3`
- substance `2`
- gallery `1` dense — Dense — tight pack
A tighter spiral, narrower size spread, and more rotation pack many terms into the canvas. Use for a long tail of vocabulary where coverage matters more than any single word.
<!-- _class: word-cloud dense -->
## Every term this branch touched.
- component `5`
- manifest `5`
- function `4`
- form `4`
- substance `4`
- gallery `3`
- folder `3`
- variant `3`
- universal `2`
- cascade `2`
- scaffolder `2`
- bundler `1`
- transform `1`
- selector `1`
- palette `1` spectrum — Spectrum — heat ramp
Colours words along a heat ramp by weight instead of cycling the categorical palette — the hottest terms read first. No rotation, so the ramp stays legible.
<!-- _class: word-cloud spectrum -->
## What this branch named, by weight.
- component `5`
- manifest `4`
- function `4`
- form `3`
- substance `3`
- gallery `2`
- variant `2`
- universal `1` focal — Focal — one dominant term
The widest size spread and steepest curve make the top term tower over the rest. Use when one word IS the message and the others are brief supporting context — keep the list short.
<!-- _class: word-cloud focal -->
## The one word that defined the branch.
- variants `5`
- gallery `2`
- manifest `2`
- docs `1`
- declared `1`