Color coding with word processor like toolbar for structures like MBRs
Posted: 06 Feb 2019 16:46
There have been various feature requests along the same lines. But it's always good to have a specific goal/example to limit the scope and make it easier to imagine the ideal user interaction.
https://thestarman.pcministry.com/asm/mbr/W8VBR.htm
This feature should allow to produce a similar output as given in the link above, with a similar workflow in mind (debugging, reverse engineering, iterative work). Stream portions should be selectable, then assigned a name, a type and a color in a toolbar. Color selection or highlighting should be automatic for ideal selection of contrast and distinguishability while reducing the count of colors used (which is a frequent issue with many statistical representations).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_color_theorem is related, as is coloring of maps with a limited set of colors. The colors in the examples are not well chosen though, since they do not consider color visions variations (most real maps do).
Maybe selecting from a list of default color palettes/formatting styles, derived from the logical annotations (=named and typed stream sections) would be useful as well, to quickly try out various styles. They should however be distinguishable for all by default (for some reason a lot of recent designs forget this and favor "style" instead of UX, and add a half-backed feature in later).
This formatted (and colorful) view should be exportable as RTF and HTML to create documentations of file formats, reverse engineering or debugging efforts.
The "named and typed bookmarks" created this way should be listed in a hierarchical (treeview? or hierarchical list view) or table view, so they can be edited or deleted or moved to other offsets.
This can be the basis for a data structure definition, that can then be overlayed on other streams later. But the main focus is formatting and structuring a specific file. Generalizing to a full structure viewer is another feature request.
https://thestarman.pcministry.com/asm/mbr/W8VBR.htm
This feature should allow to produce a similar output as given in the link above, with a similar workflow in mind (debugging, reverse engineering, iterative work). Stream portions should be selectable, then assigned a name, a type and a color in a toolbar. Color selection or highlighting should be automatic for ideal selection of contrast and distinguishability while reducing the count of colors used (which is a frequent issue with many statistical representations).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_color_theorem is related, as is coloring of maps with a limited set of colors. The colors in the examples are not well chosen though, since they do not consider color visions variations (most real maps do).
Maybe selecting from a list of default color palettes/formatting styles, derived from the logical annotations (=named and typed stream sections) would be useful as well, to quickly try out various styles. They should however be distinguishable for all by default (for some reason a lot of recent designs forget this and favor "style" instead of UX, and add a half-backed feature in later).
This formatted (and colorful) view should be exportable as RTF and HTML to create documentations of file formats, reverse engineering or debugging efforts.
The "named and typed bookmarks" created this way should be listed in a hierarchical (treeview? or hierarchical list view) or table view, so they can be edited or deleted or moved to other offsets.
This can be the basis for a data structure definition, that can then be overlayed on other streams later. But the main focus is formatting and structuring a specific file. Generalizing to a full structure viewer is another feature request.