RFC: colored PTS graph output

[colo]

Hello all,

I'm an eager reader of PTS result reports here on phoronix, but there's one thing that boggles my mind every time I read one with all those shiny graphs: Since there's a plethora of benchmarks that is run, and I don't remember all of them by name; I alwas have to look at the very tiny remark that mentions something like "higher is better" or "frames per second". Only then, taking that info into account, I am able to fathom which contestant is the best in that specific test.

What I'd like to see is a more visible, visual indication for what's better and what's worse - if a higher bar means "yay that's good" in this specific test of the benchmark suite, or if it's the lower bars to strive for.

That could be done in numerous ways, I think. Possibly the most easy of all would be to just color "higher is better"-bar graphs different from "lower is better"-bar graphs. The colors in particular wouldn't matter that much, but color-blindness should be taken into account.

Maybe something like this would be appropriate:

less = better:


more = better:



What do you think? Worth considering?

[deanjo]

Hello all,

I'm an eager reader of PTS result reports here on phoronix, but there's one thing that boggles my mind every time I read one with all those shiny graphs: Since there's a plethora of benchmarks that is run, and I don't remember all of them by name; I alwas have to look at the very tiny remark that mentions something like "higher is better" or "frames per second". Only then, taking that info into account, I am able to fathom which contestant is the best in that specific test.

What I'd like to see is a more visible, visual indication for what's better and what's worse - if a higher bar means "yay that's good" in this specific test of the benchmark suite, or if it's the lower bars to strive for.

That could be done in numerous ways, I think. Possibly the most easy of all would be to just color "higher is better"-bar graphs different from "lower is better"-bar graphs. The colors in particular wouldn't matter that much, but color-blindness should be taken into account.

Maybe something like this would be appropriate:

less = better:


more = better:



What do you think? Worth considering?

Actually would be better to have a separate colour for each run.

[Michael]

A patch to add this capability would be very simple to do, however, I am wondering if it's the right way... Perhaps it might be better to just render an arrow or something in the corner? I am not sure if I've seen other graphs change color based upon their orientation.

[colo]

I'd be fine with another way of indicating orientation, if it's about as visible as the suggested one, of course. Arrows sound like a reasonable solution, if implemented well.