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

[John]

On Mon, May 29, 2006 at 02:50:24 +0200, Alex van den Bogaerdt wrote:
> On Sun, May 28, 2006 at 10:38:04PM +0200, John wrote:
> 
> > "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.)
> 
> Would you have prefered STACKEDLINE:in#FF0000 ?
> And DASHEDLINE:in#FF0000
> And DASHEDSTACKEDLINE:in#FF0000
> 
> etc. ?
> 
> Or: forbid the legend "STACK" ?
> 
> That double colon was necessary IMO.  That is, to allow stacking
> lines on top of areas and vice versa.

I don't want neither a myriad of "DASHEDLINE"/"DASHEDSTACKEDLINE"/...
nor making any of the currently valid syntax illegal, for example by
not allowing legend "STACK".

So yes, the double colon IS necessary in the current syntax, and I
have never suggested changing that.

Just to make it clear what I think:

a, Required positional + optional named (like DEF): fine by me

b, Required positional + optional positional (like current LINE): OK,
to a certain number of optional arguments which the current LINE
syntax is nearing, after that the potentially empty "::"-clauses
start to get confusing.

c, Required positional + optional positional + optional named: not
that good I think, since I think empty optional positional arguments
look confusing.

Currently LINE is in the (b) category, and adding optional named
arguments to the current syntax would put us in the (c) category. This
is what I wanted to avoid, and hence I suggested a new syntax which
can be distinguished from the current, allowing both to be kept.

However, (c) is by no means an holy grail for me, so if the following
all would-be-valid and equivalent syntaxes, going from a minimal
amount of named arguments to a maximum:

LINE3:in#ff0000:Incoming:STACK
LINE:in#ff0000:Incoming:STACK:width=3
LINE:in:Incoming:STACK:width=3.5:color=#ff0000
LINE:in::STACK:width=3.5:color=#ff0000:legend=Incoming
LINE:in:::width=3.5:color=#ff0000:legend=Incoming:stack

looks good in your opinion, it's fine by me. Succinctly, I just
wanted to use "/" instead of ":::" in the last line.

> Perhaps it is time to change rrd-graph entirely, perhaps something
> like CSS.  Style options then do not need to go on one line, no need
> to have empty fields for unused operators, easy to expand.
>
> [cut] 
>
> Either XML-alike or CSS-alike will do.

Looks good to me too. I just want something that's extendable and the
above certainly is.

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