Algorithm To Implement A Word Cloud Like Wordle
Answer : I'm the creator of Wordle. Here's how Wordle actually works: Count the words, throw away boring words, and sort by the count, descending. Keep the top N words for some N. Assign each word a font size proportional to its count. Generate a Java2D Shape for each word, using the Java2D API. Each word "wants" to be somewhere, such as "at some random x position in the vertical center". In decreasing order of frequency, do this for each word: place the word where it wants to be while it intersects any of the previously placed words move it one step along an ever-increasing spiral That's it. The hard part is in doing the intersection-testing efficiently, for which I use last-hit caching, hierarchical bounding boxes, and a quadtree spatial index (all of which are things you can learn more about with some diligent googling). Edit: As Reto Aebersold pointed out, there's now a book chapter, freely available, that covers this same terri