0006: The visual standard of the family

Decision: This repository is also the family's standard for the visual: figures and diagrams in any document, not only slides.

Status: accepted, 2026-10-29; its principles came from review question 11, in principles/figure/. Shape: decision record.

Context

Across the family's repositories, text-art diagrams hid half their content behind a scrollbar; a drawn figure would have read better. The maintainer asked whether this repository covers visual appearance and its ergonomics; it covered slides, legibility, colour and motion, but not how a figure or a diagram is drawn. The evidence on diagram design sat in reader-ergonomics-software-design's diagram review.

Decision

This repository owns the visual: slides as before, and figures and diagrams in any document. A review strand comes first (question 11: layout, encoding and grouping, appeal, text-art against drawn diagrams, practice), then a figure group of principles, a figure shape and checks. The other repositories' figures are then redrawn, as feedback.

Alternatives rejected

• Practical only, converting text figures to rendered diagrams now: the rules would have no evidence behind them.
• Leaving figures to reader-ergonomics' page principles: they say a relation should be drawn, not how to draw it well.

Consequences

Principles about figures enter only from question 11, once audited. Software-design's diagram review is linked, not reviewed again. Once the principles exist, a figure rule here applies through its link to every repository of the family.

The cost: every repository's figures now wait on this repository, on its review of question 11 and on its pace.

See also

Decisions, the review, reader-ergonomics-software-design's system diagrams review.