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/ -- Unsubscribe mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Help mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Archive http://lists.ee.ethz.ch/rrd-developers WebAdmin http://lists.ee.ethz.ch/lsg2.cgi
