Approved Comment Syntax?

[davesides3]

Related to the idea of adding metadata. I don't think there is an official "comment" mechanism in nomnoml script? Would you consider adding an approved comment syntax to nomnoml?

The approach I'm working with now to add metadata (anchor tags and tooltips in the SVG file) is to call the Server hosted SVG URL to generate the SVG from a Python script and pull the SVG back to parse and add in the metadata. If I could embed the metadata in the nomnoml script as a comment, and that comment was included in the SVG, then I could have both the nomnoml and metadata in the same text block, which would be convenient, at least for small amounts of metadata.

Thanks for considering.

[skanaar]

Interesting. I would like to make it easier to post-process the nomnoml output.

Not sure I fully understand, could you provide an example of how such metadata could be expressed in the nomnoml-source and in the svg file?

[davesides3]

I'd previously kept the metadata in an XLSX file and loaded it with R script to extend the SVG so I'm not sure exactly what syntax to put it in a nomnoml comment for ease of parsing (probably in Python), but here's the idea with ## as a comment syntax for nomnoml:

## [node1] a|https://www.node1site.com| title|this is a tooltip|
## [node2] a|https://www.node2site.com| title|this is another tooltip|

[node1]->[node2]

in the SVG (partial):

<g ...><text ... data-name="node1"><a href='https://www.node1site.com'>node1</a><title>this is a tooltip</title></text></g>
<g ...><text ... data-name="node2"><a href='https://www.node2site.com'>node2</a><title>this is a another tooltip</title></text></g>

I might move towards a syntax within the comment like the nomnoml syntax:

## [node1] link='https...' tooltip='description...'

but the only support needed from nomnoml would be an approved comment syntax. I could also see using comments to note the author of the diagram, date, to do items, etc.

[skanaar]

Note that the source code in included in every SVG in the <desc /> element.
Nomnoml accepts // comments, you can add your annotations there, and then extract them from the <desc/> element.

I would like to do add some more structured metadata to the nodes themselves, unfortunately I have very little time for my hobbies.

[davesides]

The // comment style will work well. I didn't realize that was there. Thank you, and for sharing your creation with the world!

I haven't found any reference to where the nomnoml name came from? Does it have a particular meaning?

[skanaar]

It is derived from "nom nom" (as in "tastes good") and UML (as in Unified Modelling Language).