observablehq / observablehq/plot

Shorthand singleton marks

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enhancement
Dominant language
HTML
Stars
5.4k
Forks
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PR merge metrics
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Description

For single-instance marks, it’d be neat if you could just pass options without data. For example:

Plot.text({
  text: "Hello, world!"
  x: new Date("2016-05-01"),
  y: 100,
  dx: -10,
  dy: 40,
  frameAnchor: "top-left"
})

Could be equivalent to:

Plot.text({length: 1}, {
  text: ["Hello, world!"],
  x: [new Date("2016-05-01")],
  y: [100],
  dx: -10,
  dy: 40,
  frameAnchor: "top-left"
})

It feels like the helper would need to know which options possibly represent channels, though. And there would potentially be ambiguity with alternative representations of data (such as Arquero objects #449); though that could be addressed by checking the number of arguments and whether the first is a plain object (Object.getPrototypeOf === Object.prototype).

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First steps

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  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

Research direction

Start at the Plot.text entry point and inspect how its arguments are currently interpreted. Compare the proposed one-object form with the existing two-argument form, including plain-object and alternative data representations. Done means singleton marks accept the shorthand without making existing calls ambiguous, with coverage for the new and existing forms.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
javascript
Domain
data-visualization
Issue type
Feature
Difficulty
5/5
Estimated time
Over a week
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Mostly clear
Newbie friendliness
35/100

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