Re: Outreachy: Timeline tasks

[Christopher Baines <mail@cbaines.net>]

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Luciana Lima Brito <lubrito@posteo.net> writes:

> On Sat, 01 May 2021 20:07:56 +0100
> Christopher Baines <mail@cbaines.net> wrote:
>
>> Luciana Lima Brito <lubrito@posteo.net> writes:
>>
>> > For that I propose to build 2 charts, one of the
>> > macro view, what we call "overview first", showing the
>> > sections(processes) and their whole time taken. This way we could
>> > just see what we were aiming for, which is to identify slowness.
>> > The second chart would be what we call "details on demand", in
>> > which we could have the subsections(actions) being shown. To differ
>> > to which section(process) they are bound, we could use two
>> > meaningless alternating colours (just to group the subsections of a
>> > section), and they would follow the same order as the first chart.
>> >
>> > The use of alternating colours could be applied to both charts in
>> > order to make clear the equivalence. Both charts should appear at
>> > the same time, one above the other, to ease comparison.
>>
>> That sounds better, although I think a timeline, similar to what the
>> systemd-analyze example uses [1] might be a more natural
>> representation of the data, colour could then be used to represent
>> relatively how long each part takes.
>>
>> 1: https://lizards.opensuse.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/plot001.gif
>
> Here I have two observations to debate:
> 1 - Is the starting and ending time of each process an important
> information to determine its slowness? If this information is not
> necessary, maybe we should avoid the timeline, in order to make the
> chart cleaner. A timeline could impair the comparisons of bars, so I
> would recommend simple bar charts.

I think what things are happening when is relevant, but that's more
about understanding the hierarchy, rather than specific start and end
times.

> 2 - About the colours to represent how long each part takes, I don't
> know if I get it right. Do you mean to have one colour for slow parts
> and other colour to normal parts?

Basically, although using more colours (from a gradient, like white to
red) would probably convey more information than just two colours.

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