Attributes

Most of the drawing functions that you can call have a parameter that let you specify attributes to configure details about what you want them to do. In the end, the attributes boil down to a Clojure map whose keys are keywords that identify the attribute being configured, and whose values are what you want to use for that attribute.

The specific attributes accepted by each function are described in the function documentation. Some attributes are used by the function itself, and some are passed along to the SVG to become SVG attributes of the element you are drawing.

Attribute Expressions

Because you often want to reuse and combine the same sets of attributes when drawing your diagrams, bytefield-svg offers a shorthand way to express many useful operations concisely, without requiring you to build up the map explicitly. Drawing functions which accept attributes will process this notation for you.

If you are interested in the intricate details, attribute expressions are interpreted by the function eval-attribute-spec near the top of the source.

Raw Maps

In the simplest case, you can pass a map of attributes that you build yourself, such as when you want to tell draw-box to consume the space normally taken by two boxes:

(draw-box 42 {:span 2})

The second argument to draw-box is an attribute expression. In this case we have told it that the :span attribute should have the value 2.

Named Attributes

If you want to use one of the predefined sets of attributes, instead of a map you can pass the keyword that names them. For example, if you want to render some text in the same style normally used for drawing hexadecimal numbers, you can reference the attribute set named :hex as the second (attribute) argument to the text function:

(text "NUL" :hex)

When a keyword is found as an attribute expression, that keyword is looked up in the named-attributes table, and the corresponding value is used as the attributes to control the drawing.

In addition to the predefined values that start out in that table, you can add your own named attribute definitions by calling the defattrs function, perhaps in a shared include file.

Combining Attributes

Sometimes you want to combine multiple attribute specifications, perhaps starting with a named set of attributes and then augmenting or modifying it somehow. To express that you can pass a vector of attribute expressions, and each expression in turn will be evaluated into a map as described by this section, and the later maps will be merged into the earlier ones. The merge process allows later keys to replace earlier values, which is how you can override as well as adding on to the predefined attribute sets.

For example, here is an attribute expression that starts with the predefined :plain text attributes but establishes a lighter font weight:

[:plain {:font-weight "light"}]

And here is how to draw a box using the predefined :related (dotted) border styles, in addition to a purple background (assuming your diagram has called defattrs to set up the :bg-purple style), that takes up the space of four normal boxes:

(draw-box "Unknown" [:box-related :bg-purple {:span 4}])

No Attributes

If you don’t want to pass any attributes at all, you can either pass an empty map, {}, or nil which is interpreted in the same way. This tells the function to use its default values and behaviors. But most functions which accept an attribute parameter also allow you to call them with fewer parameters, and treat that as if you had passed nil for the attributes. You only need to pass the nil if you want to pass a value for parameter that comes later, but don’t care to send attributes.

Predefined Attributes

The following named attributes are set up for your diagram to use (although you are free to call defattrs to modify or replace any of these, as well as to add your own new sets).

Key Purpose

:hex

The default text style in which hexadecimal values are drawn, with a :font-size of 18 and :font-family "Courier New, monospace".

:plain

The default text style in which string values are drawn, with a :font-size of 18 and :font-family "Palatino, Georgia, Times New Roman, serif".

:math

A text style you can use for writing math-expression-like text, with a :font-size of 18, :font-family "Palatino, Georgia, Times New Roman, serif", and :font-style "italic".

:sub

A text style for creating subscripted nested tspan objects.

:super

A text style for creating superscripted nested tspan objects.

:bold

Adds bolding (:font-weight "bold") when merged into another text style.

:dotted

A line style for drawing dotted lines. Commonly used with borders, but you can use it when calling the draw-line function and lower-level SVG drawing primitives too.

:border-unrelated

The line styles for drawing the borders of boxes whose content is separate from the boxes around them (this uses the default line drawing style).

:border-related

The line styles styles for drawing the borders of boxes that are related to those around them (this uses a :stroke-dasharray of "1,3" which is a light dotted line).

:box-first

A set of border styles for the first box in a row of related boxes. It uses the unrelated style for its left, top, and bottom borders, and the related style for its right border.

:box-related

A set of border styles for a middle box in a row of related boxes. It uses the unrelated style for its top, and bottom borders, and the related style for its left and right borders.

:box-last

A set of border styles for the last box in a row of related boxes. It uses the unrelated style for its right, top, and bottom borders, and the related style for its left border.

:box-above

A set of border styles for a box that is open to the row below. It draws only its left, right, and top borders.

:box-above-related

A set of border styles for a box that is open to the row below and related to the previous box. It draws only its left, right, and top borders, and the left border is drawn in the :box-related style.

:box-below

A set of border styles for a box that is open to the row above. It draws only its left, right, and bottom borders.

Even though there is no style predefined for situations where you have really long values that span more than two rows, you can always draw middle boxes that span entire rows, and explicitly specify they have borders only on the right and left by passing {:borders #{:left :right}} as their attributes. If you find yourself doing that a lot, and want to set up your own shorthand for this style of box, that’s what defattrs is for.

For examples of how to combine the box styles, the source for the diagrams in the DJ Link Ecosystem Analysis is full of variations. You can see it by clicking the Edit this Page link at the top right of a page that looks interesting.