Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Who needs Graphviz when you can build it yourself?

spidermonkey.dev

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 114 posts

Re: Who needs Graphviz when you can build it yourself?

#91

Post by a_e_k »

Someone wrote: post #60
wswope wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can see how you got that impression and don’t fault you for it in the slightest, but that’s not accurate. It’s not the language name for all Graphviz syntax; it’s only the syntax for renderings made with the dot engine. Each engine has its own DSL, basically.

> Each engine has its own DSL, basically. Does it? There are slightly different DSLs for directed and non-directed graphs, some features only work with some output formats, but AFAIK, everything in the DSL in independent of the layout engine.

You can also set:

    layout = neato;
in a dot file, call dot, and it will use the neato layout engine.

(See https://graphviz.org/docs/attrs/layout/)

And if I look in my /usr/bin, I see that neato is just symlinked to dot. It's pulling the usual trick of one executable that behaves slightly differently depending on the invocation name.

Re: Who needs Graphviz when you can build it yourself?

#92

Post by 1gn15 »

rs186 wrote: post #48
benterix wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting. The wiki says: "The Eclipse Public License is designed to be a business-friendly free software license, and features weaker copyleft provisions than licenses such as the GNU General Public License (GPL)."

Well, it's just they think it's business-friendly. From EPL: > If a Contributor Distributes the Program in any form, then: a) the Program must also be made available as Source Code, in accordance with section 3.2 ... Except in startups that really embrace the idea of open source, no "serious" company will offer any portion of their source code under EPL license, even if that's just the modified/derived part of it. No…

Can't you buy an exception to the license?

Re: Who needs Graphviz when you can build it yourself?

#93

Post by rs186 »

1gn15 wrote: post #92
rs186 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, it's just they think it's business-friendly. From EPL: > If a Contributor Distributes the Program in any form, then: a) the Program must also be made available as Source Code, in accordance with section 3.2 ... Except in startups that really embrace the idea of open source, no "serious" company will offer any portion of their source code under EPL license, even if that's just the modified/derived part of it. No…

Can't you buy an exception to the license?

Not my call.

Re: Who needs Graphviz when you can build it yourself?

#95

Post by jasonm23 »

Ghoelian wrote: post #35
rurban wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, that would be great. Iongraph is MPL, graphviz is EPL. But Iongraph is Javascript anyway, so you would need to use Claude to translate it to C

Why would you need Claude for that?

"Need" is a bad word ... and ymmv

Re: Who needs Graphviz when you can build it yourself?

#96

Post by jasonm23 »

dfabulich wrote: post #70
le-mark wrote: post #24

This is a great write up and thank you to the author! Just a note that graphviz dot is not purely Sugiyama’s, there is a paper on the site that details the actual implementation. Also judging from the final two images (dot vs iongraph for the same large graph) it’s clear that dot is optimized for minimal area where iongraph does not. That’s the trade off. The author claims one is more easy to navigate than the other,…

Visualizing large graphs is a "tarpit idea," one that initially seems appealing but never succeeds in practice. Fundamentally, the problem is that visual aids can only really represent a few dozen things before they become as complicated as the thing you were trying to understand in the first place. And when analyzing messy node diagrams, it’s not just the nodes we’re trying to visualize, but the lines connecting the…

There's a threshold, of both user ability and scale of 'problem'

I mostly agree with you dfabulich - the repeated efforts to create node/pipeline tools "visual programming languages" are not built for us, and feel redundant.

But I took issue with "where you don't need it" as this is very much dependent on who "you" is.

Re: Who needs Graphviz when you can build it yourself?

#97

Post by somat »

dfabulich wrote: post #70
le-mark wrote: post #24

This is a great write up and thank you to the author! Just a note that graphviz dot is not purely Sugiyama’s, there is a paper on the site that details the actual implementation. Also judging from the final two images (dot vs iongraph for the same large graph) it’s clear that dot is optimized for minimal area where iongraph does not. That’s the trade off. The author claims one is more easy to navigate than the other,…

Visualizing large graphs is a "tarpit idea," one that initially seems appealing but never succeeds in practice. Fundamentally, the problem is that visual aids can only really represent a few dozen things before they become as complicated as the thing you were trying to understand in the first place. And when analyzing messy node diagrams, it’s not just the nodes we’re trying to visualize, but the lines connecting the…

This is my problem with node based editors, the one I am most familiar with being blenders shader editor. I mean, sure, I guess it represents the internal structure. But it always feels so messy. Sometimes I wish blender would just let me work with a netlist.

Re: Who needs Graphviz when you can build it yourself?

#99

Post by rs186 »

saagarjha wrote: post #98
rs186 wrote: post #18

We looked at using Graphviz, but the copyleft nature of Graphviz license (Eclipse Public License) means that this will never be allowed in our company's software.

Your loss I guess

whatever, it's not the only graphics library out there. These days, almost for every software with copyleft license there is a permissive alternative, perhaps with the notable exception of Linux kernel.

Re: Who needs Graphviz when you can build it yourself?

#100

Post by rs186 »

kragen wrote: post #74
rs186 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, it's just they think it's business-friendly. From EPL: > If a Contributor Distributes the Program in any form, then: a) the Program must also be made available as Source Code, in accordance with section 3.2 ... Except in startups that really embrace the idea of open source, no "serious" company will offer any portion of their source code under EPL license, even if that's just the modified/derived part of it. No…

There are a pretty large number of "serious" companies that distribute code under the GNU GPL, which has similar but more stringent copyleft terms. IBM, for example, which also originated the Eclipse Public License, and TI, and ARM, and Apple. Almost every microcontroller vendor uses GCC.

I meant "product code" mostly, and of course you could say WebKit is part of a product and you'll be correct. My point is that it's the exception, not the norm. (Using "no company" was wrong on my end)
Post reply on HN