A few quick comments: > * I think talk=True was a bad choice of option name. It's limiting, > potentially conflicts with other options, etc.
+1 This seems to happen often; an option gets implemented as a boolean, and later a similar option is added, ... when an option with several keyword possibilities makes more sense long-term. Rendering graphs with LaTeX via tikz refers to collections of rendering options as a "style" - maybe that would be more descriptive than "mode." What color is your bike shed? ;-) A real strength of graphs in Sage is the possibility of any hashable object being used to label a vertex. My previous experience was to only be able to number vertices and then I'd somehow manage the mapping from the integers to the desired labels. So I agree that the graphs are more appealing visually without labels, but this hides an advantage from view for the novice. If they are there in the default view, then perhaps you figure out quickly that they could be turned off? I think some care has gone into the graph generators to provide labels in many cases that make more sense than just integers (eg bipartite graphs). I think the bigger problem is that moderately complicated labels (like in the notebook example given) are written centered on a vertex, and often they are bigger (wider) than the vertex itself. But drawing them off to one side would be a little harder to figure out, and might be just as messy looking in the end. Finally, I find that if I really want to study or learn something about a graph, the labels are necessary. In other words, the label- less plots are pretty, but often not useful for any serious analysis. So I guess I'm giving some reasons for labels being a good idea as the default, but I don't feel strongly about it. Better might be a strategy for placing labels in a graph, perhaps something like a keyword "label_location" that takes on values like center, above, below, left, right, northwest, northeast, southeast, southwest. Rob --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ To post to this group, send an email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel URL: http://www.sagemath.org -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
