TreeSS support levels - TreeViz/metastyle GitHub Wiki

As tree viewers and editors adopt TreeSS, it's likely that we'll see uneven support across different programs. Rather than a detailed chart of which specific operators, etc. are supported in each program, we might want to generalize support levels based on core features (e.g. branch thickness) vs. nice-to-haves (e.g. evaluating expressions). We might also want to label programs as having reading support (can parse and apply TreeSS to a tree) versus writing support (can generate valid TreeSS stylesheets based on style and layout choices made within the program).

Support levels

Perhaps we could use Olympic medals as a commonly-understood basis? Each represents support for a chosen set of needed/wanted/aspirational features:

Bronze support meets our "most wanted" viz requirements, as shown here.

TODO: Replace the similar files in this repo, with the ones above?

• https://github.com/TreeViz/metastyle/blob/master/design/viz_targets_exercise/targets.md
• https://github.com/TreeViz/metastyle/blob/master/design/viz_targets_exercise/tree_viz_targets.pdf

Silver support might include adjacent/margin display of attributes alongside the tree proper.

Gold support might include live evaluation of expressions and other aspiration features.

Reading vs. writing

This is more straightforward. A program with reading support can parse and apply TreeSS to a tree. A program with writing support can generate valid TreeSS stylesheets based on style and layout choices made within the program, typically through a friendlier UI.

So a given app/version might be described as Gold-level Reading, or Silver-level Reading and Bronze-level Writing (i.e., it can parse and apply more features than it can write on-the-fly).