Tag Cloud Visualization Almost Unusable

[morgango]

Kibana version:
5.5

Elasticsearch version:

5.5

Server OS version:

Mac OS X

Browser version:

Chrome
60.0

Original install method (e.g. download page, yum, from source, etc.):
Download Page

Description of the problem including expected versus actual behavior:

The tag cloud component seems to give an obscene amount of value to preserving whitespace, to the point where it may return a warning when more than 50% of the space provided is available.

For example:

This visualization was given 25% of a full-screen dashboard and still couldn't display 5 relatively short (3-5 word) text strings.

Steps to reproduce:

1. Make a tag cloud.
2. Put anything other than single words in the tag cloud.
3. Watch warnings pop up every time.

Describe the feature:

The tag cloud should not require so much whitespace that it becomes unusable. It is a poor user experience to have an error every time it renders.

The tag cloud should attempt to resize text until it fits the screen, not return an error and a nearly-blank visualization. This component is a really nice addition to a dashboard, but isn't very usable in its current state.

[monfera]

Would be worth revisiting it once this lands in Kibana, as it appears to be OK with denser layouts, though of course a lot depends on the min/max font size, word sizing, padding etc. In particular, it's best if only the top very few words are large, the rest should taper off rapidly, it's achieved in the example configs by using a high exponent in the weight function, see the exponent slider among the story knobs.

The Kibana integration issues are: Lens and TagCloud

[ghudgins]

We have updated the implementation for Tag Clouds in Agg-based Visualizations and believe this issue is resolved. Re-open if you still see any issues after upgrading to ~7.16 or later