The Picviz language

Introduction

The Picviz language is a graph description language, similar to graphviz dot language. With Picviz, the language can be divided in four sections:

• header (optional): contains the graph title, default background etc..
• engine (optional): changes Picviz engine internals (not recommended)
• axes : variable and properties setting for each axis
• data : plot your data on previously defined axes

header {
    title = "Plot my IP";
}
axes {
    timeline t;
    ipv4    i;
}
data {
   t="14:42", i="123.2.3.4";
   t="15:45", i="200.123.4.6";
   t="15:45", i="255.255.255.255";
}

Properties

Properties can be set for each axis and for each line. They are a set of key = "values" coma separated between brackets:

[label="foobar",color="orange"]

Axis properties

In the axes section, following properties are available: label,relative and print. That you can use like this:

axes {
   timeline t [label="Time"];
   ipv4     src [label="Source IP",print="false"];
   string   data [label="Data",relative="true"];
}

• label is the text that is written on top of the axis on the generated image.

• relative spreads the string variable as far possible from each other (incompatible with the basic string algorithm).

• print will not print values on this axis when asking to print values (option -a in the pcv binary)

Variables

Each axis must have a variable. Choose among:

Type	Range	Description
timeline	"00:00:00" - "23:59:59"	24 hours time value
years	"1970-01-01 00:00:00" - "2023-12-31 23:59:59"	Years of time value
integer	0 - 65535	Integer number
string	"" - "No specific limit"	A string value
short	0 - 32767	Short number
ipv4	0.0.0.0 - 255.255.255.255	IPv4 address
gold	0 - 1433	Small value
char	0 - 255	Tiny value
enum	anything	Enumeration
ln	0 - N	ln(x)

Line properties

In the data section, only the following property is available: color, penwidth. That you can use like this:

data {
    t="12:30", src="192.168.1.1" [color="red"];
    t="12:42", src="192.168.1.23" [color="blue",penwidth="3"];
}

Following colors are available: "white","black", "red", "green", "blue", "yellow", "grey", "turquoise", "pink", "orange", "darkblue", "darkgreen", "darkred", "brown".