I'm currently trying to find a way how to visually represent complex storages (LVMs, RAIDs) in the blivet-gui[1] (and in the future for anaconda too).
------ TL;DR version: Help me find a way how to visually represent storages, my current ideas[2] sucks. ------
Even a simple Fedora installation on machine with a single harddrive can produce quite a complex storage -- installation using encrypted LVM results into seven devices with four level deep structure (luks-physical volume-volume group-logical volumes).
The challenge here is to create a simple graphical representation of this situation (and of course also not so standard storages with LVMs over RAIDs and other weird configurations) that would be easy to understand and could fit into application window[3] (leaving space for other widgets).
I'm currently using system similar to GParted -- colored rectangles with child devices "embedded" into their parents -- a little like rectangular contour map -- https://vtrefny.fedorapeople.org/blivet-gui/storage-visualisation1.png It looked like good idea but I think it is too complicated and hard to understand with more "layers".
My second idea is derived from GNOME Disks -- https://vtrefny.fedorapeople.org/blivet-gui/storage-visualisation2.png (just a mockup created using Gimp). Problem is it would need extra space for some basic information (name, size...) and it would be worse for more storages with more layers.
The idea I like the most is using tree-like visualization -- https://vtrefny.fedorapeople.org/blivet-gui/storage-visualisation3.png -- it can show the whole complex structure of the storage, unfortunately it would never fit into the window.
The result is I have three options that I don't like and I'm not able to come up with something new or better. So I hope somebody will come up with some amazing solution. Feel free to share all your crazy ideas and thoughts.
Vojtech T.
-- [1] http://blog.vojtechtrefny.cz/blivet-gui [2] https://vtrefny.fedorapeople.org/blivet-gui/ [3] https://vtrefny.fedorapeople.org/blivet-gui/blivet-gui-window.png