All, As you can see below, I've gone a long way on letting users customize plots. Link to code: http://svn.boost.org/trac/boost/wiki/soc/2007/VisualizationOfContainers#Comp... Link to image: http://www.tcnj.edu/~voytko2/svg_complex.htm Mathias Gaunard suggested I look at "Boost.Parameter", and I think that it could provide a lot of benefits to my library. The question I have is how much should I let it influence my interface? There are functions that could clearly benefit from named parameters. plot_range() is the most obvious for me.. you could specify stroke and fill colors, shapes, etc along with the iterator information. There are also smaller gains that could be made, such as having a function for setting the styles of the legend, one for the plot ticks, one for the background, etc. What is the best practice for this? Should the use of named parameters be ubiquitous, or should I only use them where there are huge benefits? I want to make sure I stick with good practices before I start rewriting vast swaths of my headers. Thank you for your help, Jake