[Haskell-cafe] ANN: diagrams 0.4

[Ivan Lazar Miljenovic]

On 25 October 2011 16:02, Rustom Mody <rustompmody at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Mon, Oct 24, 2011 at 10:16 AM, Ivan Lazar Miljenovic
> <ivan.miljenovic at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> On 24 October 2011 13:51, Rustom Mody <rustompmody at gmail.com> wrote:
>> > How does diagrams compare with graphviz?  If this is an inappropriate
>> > (type-wrong?) question thats ok :-)  Its just that when I last looked at
>> > graphviz I found the documentation somewhat impenetrable -- like much
>> > else
>> > in Hackage -- lots of types, no examples.
>>
>> How is it now, better?  If not, what kind of more documentation would you
>> like?
>
>
> Without claiming to have looked very hard, I looked up grahhviz in hayoo,
> gathered I should be looking at Data.GraphViz and tried clicking everything
> that looked reasonable here
> but still cant find an example of a graph :-) ie a graphviz graph in
> haskell.

Well, there are indeed examples in there, but not in Data.GraphViz:
that module is aimed more at "how can I convert my existing data into
a Dot representation", not constructing one by hand.  As of the latest
version (2999.12.*), there are indeed examples for anyone that wants
them:

* Sample graph in Dot representation used as a base case:
http://hackage.haskell.org/packages/archive/graphviz/2999.12.0.3/doc/html/Data-GraphViz-Types.html
* Using the canonical representation:
http://hackage.haskell.org/packages/archive/graphviz/2999.12.0.3/doc/html/Data-GraphViz-Types-Canonical.html
* Using the graph representation:
http://hackage.haskell.org/packages/archive/graphviz/2999.12.0.3/doc/html/Data-GraphViz-Types-Generalised.html
* Using the Monadic representation (based upon the dotgen package):
http://hackage.haskell.org/packages/archive/graphviz/2999.12.0.3/doc/html/Data-GraphViz-Types-Graph.html

The Data.GraphViz.Types module also has a short description of how to
choose which representation.

However, I'll add a note in Data.GraphViz telling people to look in
Data.GraphViz.Types if they want to construct a Dot graph by hand.

> Is this a complaint against graphviz or against hackage/cabal etc?? Dunno.

I'd say it's more a case of: to the maintainer, it's _obvious_ how to
do stuff since they're intimately familiar with the details; as such,
if something isn't clear let them know that you're confused by
something (which at least in my case jogs me to go and add extra
clarification on such matters)!

-- 
Ivan Lazar Miljenovic
Ivan.Miljenovic at gmail.com
IvanMiljenovic.wordpress.com