Plot({}) types and custom plots

[OAGr]

Problem: Users often will want custom plots, for different purposes.
Recommended solution: We make one type in squiggle for Plot. This will basically just wrap a record, but be used specifically for plotting.

The bottom is very-rough example syntax, we could get arbitrarily fancy about the allowed params.

Example Syntax:

a = DistributionPlot.make(normal(5,2), {
  title: "Piano Tuners",
  color: "blue",
  xLog: true,
  yLog: false,
  showStats: true,
  xMin: 10,
  xMax: 50
})
a

In the rescript codebase, this will just be stored as some simple records.

All plot types returned by the user will be plotted, when in the playground. The calling function (our Typescript components) can decide what to do with this output.

[umuro]

TradingView.com has had a similar adventure. They have an online functional language for scripting. Hmm. What a similarity.
This is their plot function.
I think it might give you some ideas as well...

[OAGr]

Good point!
One difference between there version and ours is that ours would be more pure.
There's returns "void", ours return a custom "Plot()" type, which would be returned by the function.

[umuro]

Returning seemingly void in the language is an interesting decision. But it is a fake void. In fact, their scripts are all returning a bunch of plot records. Just a plot record is completely hidden from the user but still available in the bindings.
In fact, one script can return more than one plot. They are differentiating the plots with their title parameter.
Their void is in fact a hidden assignment

[umuro]

I guess they made it such that it gives the user an impression of actually plotting while all he is doing is creating a record

[OAGr]

Interesting, makes sense.

[umuro]

It is possible to do such tricks with a parser. You can convert plot(title="main") to hiddenPlot_main = plot() , etc.