RFC: Polishing Up The Result Graphs

Written by Michael Larabel in Phoronix on 15 September 2015 at 02:47 PM EDT. 37 Comments
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It's time for another call-out for requests for comments on how to better enhance the appearance/presentation of information on our benchmark result graphs seen on Phoronix as well as OpenBenchmarking.org and LinuxBenchmarking.com, etc.

For Phoronix Test Suite 6.0 and the brand new OpenBenchmarking.org -- both launching later this year -- I've been working on some enhancements to the "pts_Graph" code that produces all the SVG/PNG visuals of Linux benchmark data. The bulk of this graphing code is nearly ten years old, albeit has been reworked over the years as SVG has become common among web-browsers than defaulting to a GD-based renderer, eliminating the Flash/SWF and other renderer back-ends, and making other improvements.
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Of course, reading any Phoronix review / benchmark article you should see plenty of graphs, for what I'm soliciting feedback on. Just curious if any Phoronix readers have any bright ideas for making them more visually attractive, informative, or better in any other manner.
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As an example, I've been meaning to add more tool-tips / hover information as one of the items on my agenda, but haven't got that squared away yet in a clean manner.
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Or if you want to take it one-step further than just offering comments on this article, the current code is housed within the pts_svg_dom and pts_Graph. At the moment I'm in the process of a big rework of the pts_Graph code, which tentatively is just being called phx_graph as I figure out the new interfaces for how it's interacting with the Phoronix Test Suite result objects, result files, etc, plus get back up to parity on the functionality and not having any graphing regressions when it will then become the default and likely merged back into pts_Graph.
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As explained before, for those wondering why I don't just use any of the number of JavaScript graph/chart libraries out there, it comes down to several reasons. Aside from having been working on pts_Graph prior to the JS-approaches that then just generally target SVG, I still need to support server-side graphing without introducing any new server dependencies, the OpenBenchmarking.org/PTS code will still work for web browsers even if JS is disabled by falling back to a PNG-renderered version, and from the Phoronix Test Suite I still need to be able to render the result graphs inside PDF files. Those are among the reasons for still going with PHP-based graphing. There's also the benefit of designing the graphing code explicitly around the sole needs of the Phoronix Test Suite.


Any feedback on improving these graphs are welcome. If you have any really good ideas or submit any pull requests for useful code changes, I'll be giving away some Phoronix Premium subscriptions for those helping out. Thanks for any constructive feedback!
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About The Author
Michael Larabel

Michael Larabel is the principal author of Phoronix.com and founded the site in 2004 with a focus on enriching the Linux hardware experience. Michael has written more than 20,000 articles covering the state of Linux hardware support, Linux performance, graphics drivers, and other topics. Michael is also the lead developer of the Phoronix Test Suite, Phoromatic, and OpenBenchmarking.org automated benchmarking software. He can be followed via Twitter, LinkedIn, or contacted via MichaelLarabel.com.

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