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. Naturally, XML (mentioned in the old thread) is superior to both positional and named arguments in some respects, but I don't want to be held responsible when the users ask why they need expat to draw some graphs... ;) -- Unsubscribe mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Help mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Archive http://lists.ee.ethz.ch/rrd-developers WebAdmin http://lists.ee.ethz.ch/lsg2.cgi
