Design a GUI browser to view a tree

Question

I have a large tree. I want to be able to visualize it using a GUI tool. I want the ability to pan and zoom the tree image so that i can focus on part of the tree.

1. Is there an existing tool to achieve this?
2. If not i would like to write a small tool for myself to be able to do this. what is the simplest way of doing this? what computer language should i use?

the image should look something like

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/df/Binary_tree.png

I should be able to zoom and pan the image.

Answer 1

One idea is to use the NetworkX library for Python, coupled with its matplotlib visualization. NetworkX can render trees to matplotlib plots and matplotlib allows you to zoom and pan.

Depending on the actual sizes of your trees this may or may not be a complete solution. What's sure is that you can whip it up in a few minutes for rapid prototyping.