Re: [boost] Re: [BGL] forced client complexity

From: Jeremy Siek (jsiek_at_[hidden])
Date: 2004-04-01 09:37:29

Hi Vladimir,

Thanks for your comments!

On Apr 1, 2004, at 1:49 AM, Vladimir Prus wrote:
> Specifically, there reference is really lacking -- for example, try to
> figure out what the 'make_label_writer' function does

That is documented in write-graphviz.html. Did you find the explanation 
there
hard to understand?

(In general, I'm not particularly happy with the read/write graphviz
interface, but I don't have time now to do a redesign)

>  and in what header it's defined.

I've added a "Where Defined" section.

> I remember that I had similiar question about a bunch of
> other functions, too.

When you hit one, let me know.

> Another issue is that I never seem to remember how event visitors work 
> and
> have to look it up in documentation, which invariably requires looking 
> at 3
> or 4 separate pages.

Any suggestions on how to improve this?

> My favourite problem is external property maps. I really think that I 
> should
> be able to just run
>
>     topological_sort(G, back_inserter(order));
>
> and don't bother if 'G' has vertex_index_t property or not. Currently, 
> if I
> use anything else than vecS for vertex storage, the above code won't
> compile.

So is your problem with external property maps, or with some graphs
that don't provide a vertex index property?

> Generally, most of the time I assume that all vertex descriptors are
> integers, and don't try to write really generic code, because I 
> suspect it
> too much work.
>
> I should admit that basic operations like iteration over adjacent 
> vertices
> are fine -- they are a bit verbose, but it's not a big problem.
>
[snip]
> To tell the truth, I have no idea how to specify vertex properties when
> adding vertex, so maybe this is the thing to improve first. We might 
> have:
>
>    add_vertex(g, "brother");

This is how:
add_vertex(std::string("brother"), g)
or more explicitly:
add_vertex(property<vertex_name_t,std::string>("brother"), g)
which I have to admit is pretty ugly.

Perhaps one way to avoid the complication of using the property class
would be to provide some support for the use of a plain struct where 
each
member is a vertex property.

> we can also have a way to find a vertex with specific value of specific
> property:
>
>    find(g, vertex_name, "brother")

Sure. Write it up and we'll add it :) It should only be a few lines of 
code.

Cheers,
Jeremy

_______________________________________________
Jeremy Siek <jsiek_at_[hidden]>
http://www.osl.iu.edu/~jsiek
Ph.D. Student, Indiana University Bloomington
Graduating in August 2004 and looking for work
C++ Booster (http://www.boost.org)
_______________________________________________