[rrd-developers] Re: Dashed lines, LINE-syntax

[Tobias Oetiker]

Hi John,

it is not my intention to fight with you ... so if you want to
argue about my sugestions, tell me then I won't have to spend my
time writing these things up ...

Today John wrote:

> On Sun, May 28, 2006 at 12:11:00 +0200, Tobias Oetiker wrote:
> > the argument separator is : and adding optional key[=value]
> > arguments is fine ... the only thing that is bugging me, is that we
> > now do have a mix of positional and optional named arguments, this is not
> > good since it turns things unnecessarily complex.
> >
> > see also the DEF command ...
>
> If using ":" as a separator, how should "LINE:incoming:stack" be
> interpreted? Is it a line with legend "stack", or is it a "new" style
> for "LINE:incoming::STACK"?
>
> "LINE:incoming/stack" is unambiguous and allows keeping the old syntax
> for backward compatibility, that's why I suggested to use something
> other than ":" or "#". Of course, one could use named arguments just
> for new stuff, say "LINE2:in#ff0000:Incoming::dash=2,3", but "::" is a
> bit unintuitive, isn't it? (Note that this isn't a problem for DEF
> since all previous arguments are required.)
>
> I agree that having two different syntaxes isn't optimal, but aren't
> the positional arguments getting a bit complex themselves? Say we want
> to add support for multiple y-axes (for example to allow different
> scales for incoming and outgoing) as well as dashed lines, how would
> the positional LINE-syntax look? Keeping track of ":::" for the unused
> arguments isn't very easy.

well using positional optional arguments was not a good idea, but
there we are ... and after all there we are ... with your /
spearator you would again break stuff, notably all instances where
/ was used in the comment ...

stack on the other hand is a key[=value] type argument so there is
not need for an extra empty :: pair if there is no stack ...

cheers
tobi
-- 
ETH Zurich
Tobias Oetiker, IT Support Group D-ITET (ISG.EE)
ETL F24.2, Physikstrasse 3, 8092 Zurich, Switzerland
Phone +41 44 63 25286,  http://people.ee.ethz.ch/oetiker/

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