[Boost-users] Re: [BGL] forced client complexity

A well written critique. I had to go look up the word "prolix" (i.e. verbose). In defense of BGL: I am no BGL expert despite having read the book several times and writing a complex client application that uses dozens of different graph types. I admit, it was some hard work getting going with BGL. However, this is because I didn't know C++ templates nearly as well as I thought I did. Certainly there's nothing in the library that would preclude anyone from writing simpler BGL-derived classes that offer solutions that are packaged to solve specific problems. Post specific problems and people will help.

It is difficult for me to assess whether the simplicity I yearn for isn't present for stylistic reasons or whether it would rather necessitate a sacrifice of flexibility, functionality or implementation clarity.

Having become baseline proficient with BGL, I would disagree that it's overly complex. To me BGL is an elegant solution to a class of very complex problems that strikes a reasonable balance between complexity and flexibility. In my opinion, if you frequently use graphs BGL is well worth the investment required to learn how to use it. - Chris "Provisional Dissonance" wrote in message news:20040331094800.93338.qmail@web60105.mail.yahoo.com...

If one accepts the axiom that "a picture is worth a thousand words," then it naturally follows that discussion of graphs is always overly prolix. Sadly, the same reasoning is also applicable to the code of graph libraries. Boost.Graph seems to expose and require an unnecessarily large amount of complexity, though. Whereas libraries like Spirit go to great lengths to make hard things easy, BGL seems to try only to make hard things possible. The amount of scaffolding required to use BGL for even the simplest of projects often dwarfs the code size of a naive, yet functional, special-purpose implementation.

While I understand that the BGL is deeply entrenched in boost culture, certain academic circles, and even publications, I nonetheless suggest that BGL lacks the ease of use necessary for widespread adoption. Even knowing that ease-of-use is not a criterion for acceptance into boost, looking at what is required of the client to use the BGL always leaves me feeling perplexed. Is there any particular reason that a simplified interface is not made available? Perhaps a container adapter could be packaged with the library allowing a compromise of functionality and flexibility for simplicity? If a graphing problem is trivial, shouldn't BGL provide a trivial solution? Why are the simplest useful examples several hundred lines of code?

I apologize for all of my vague criticisms - my intention is not to flame but rather to test the waters. It is difficult for me to assess whether the simplicity I yearn for isn't present for stylistic reasons or whether it would rather necessitate a sacrifice of flexibility, functionality or implementation clarity. Nor is it clear to me to what extent these criteria can be compromised to promote clarity of client code. For what it is worth, the kind of ease-of-use I'm imagining might look like:

#include ... digraph g; g << "vertex" << make_pair("vertex", "implicit_vertex"); g.add_edge("brother", "sister", "sibling"); if(g.find(make_pair("brother", "sister"))) related = true;

Could someone please elucidate on why it is impossible/impractical/unnecessary/whatever for a graph library to have such an interface? Should I accept that the BGL is not the magic bullet graph library and move on, or can this kind of simplicity be somehow found within?

Thanks in advance, prs

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