Re: Image_Digraph and Structures_Graph Package Proposal

Jesus M. Castagnetto wrote:

1) Yes, you need an account to propose a package via PEPr, you can sign up for one at the usual place in PEAR: http://pear.php.net/account-request.php

No problem. I thought accounts were only assigned to package maintainers. For now, I guess I'll follow the old procedure...

2) Your classe Image_Digraph looks interesting. I could not see the output in Konqueror, but in Opera and Firebird worked fine (I use Linux).

I just tested Moz, Opera and IE6. It should degrade gracefully, though, and still allow interaction without node hovering.

I tend to like Image_Digraph but I am still not convinced 100% if the only use is to generate images that I could generate w/ dot w/o the advantages of dot.

I also like and use GraphViz a lot, but I need to do stuff with graphs that I can't with GraphViz. I'm using graphs to represent sitemaps, page transformation and page layout under the philosophy of Apache's Cocoon project. Sitemaps and page transformation can easily be represented by GraphViz. Page layout, however, requires a very customized node representation and automatic layout algorithms. It's not easy to place that into GraphViz (meaning it's easier to write a generic graph layout package in PHP). I did not emphasize the extensibility in the documentation, but with Image_Digraph, you can replace parts of it with your own classes. Namely, you can replace specific nodes' graphical representation in your graph, and you can completely replace the layout class if the generic ones don't fit the bill. Extensibility is what you get with an all-php implementation. I'd quickly write a mockup of the inteface I'm implementing, but I probably won't have time to do that before monday. I want to get the discussion going before that.

OTOH, I like you Structure_Graph because it not only has provision for representing graphs, but also has code that can operate on graphs (your 'Manipulator' classes). I would like to see this class in PEAR very much.

Thanks. Cheers, Sérgio