Arguments are often not available in docstring or `hvplot.help`

[MarcSkovMadsen]

While creating docstrings for hvPlot I see over and over again that the most obvious, needed arguments are not documented in the docstring or hvplot.help.

This must be a bug. And it makes arguments too hard for users to discover.

Example Bar, stacked.

hvplot.help('bar')

stacked is not documented

Bars plot

Parameters
----------
x, y : string, optional
    Field name to draw x- and y-positions from
**kwds : optional
    Keyword arguments to pass on to
    :py:meth:`hvplot.converter.HoloViewsConverter`.
Returns
-------
obj : HoloViews object
    The HoloViews representation of the plot.

Generic options
---------------
clim: tuple
    Lower and upper bound of the color scale
cnorm (default='linear'): str
    Color scaling which must be one of 'linear', 'log' or 'eq_hist'
colorbar (default=False): boolean
    Enables a colorbar
fontscale: number
    Scales the size of all fonts by the same amount, e.g. fontscale=1.5
    enlarges all fonts (title, xticks, labels etc.) by 50%
fontsize: number or dict
    Set title, label and legend text to the same fontsize. Finer control
    by using a dict: {'title': '15pt', 'ylabel': '5px', 'ticks': 20}
flip_xaxis/flip_yaxis: boolean
    Whether to flip the axis left to right or up and down respectively
grid (default=False): boolean
    Whether to show a grid
hover : boolean
    Whether to show hover tooltips, default is True unless datashade is
    True in which case hover is False by default
hover_cols (default=[]): list or str
    Additional columns to add to the hover tool or 'all' which will
    includes all columns (including indexes if use_index is True).
invert (default=False): boolean
    Swaps x- and y-axis
frame_width/frame_height: int
    The width and height of the data area of the plot
legend (default=True): boolean or str
    Whether to show a legend, or a legend position
    ('top', 'bottom', 'left', 'right')
logx/logy (default=False): boolean
    Enables logarithmic x- and y-axis respectively
logz (default=False): boolean
    Enables logarithmic colormapping
loglog (default=False): boolean
    Enables logarithmic x- and y-axis
max_width/max_height: int
    The maximum width and height of the plot for responsive modes
min_width/min_height: int
    The minimum width and height of the plot for responsive modes
padding: number or tuple
    Fraction by which to increase auto-ranged extents to make
    datapoints more visible around borders. Supports tuples to
    specify different amount of padding for x- and y-axis and
    tuples of tuples to specify different amounts of padding for
    upper and lower bounds.
rescale_discrete_levels (default=True): boolean
    If `cnorm='eq_hist` and there are only a few discrete values,
    then `rescale_discrete_levels=True` (the default) decreases
    the lower limit of the autoranged span so that the values are
    rendering towards the (more visible) top of the `cmap` range, 
    thus avoiding washout of the lower values.  Has no effect if
    `cnorm!=`eq_hist`.
responsive: boolean
    Whether the plot should responsively resize depending on the
    size of the browser. Responsive mode will only work if at
    least one dimension of the plot is left undefined, e.g. when
    width and height or width and aspect are set the plot is set
    to a fixed size, ignoring any responsive option.
rot: number
    Rotates the axis ticks along the x-axis by the specified
    number of degrees.
shared_axes (default=True): boolean
    Whether to link axes between plots
transforms (default={}): dict
    A dictionary of HoloViews dim transforms to apply before plotting
title (default=''): str
    Title for the plot
tools (default=[]): list
    List of tool instances or strings (e.g. ['tap', box_select'])
xaxis/yaxis: str or None
    Whether to show the x/y-axis and whether to place it at the
    'top'/'bottom' and 'left'/'right' respectively.
xformatter/yformatter (default=None): str or TickFormatter
    Formatter for the x-axis and y-axis (accepts printf formatter,
    e.g. '%.3f', and bokeh TickFormatter)
xlabel/ylabel/clabel (default=None): str
    Axis labels for the x-axis, y-axis, and colorbar
xlim/ylim (default=None): tuple or list
    Plot limits of the x- and y-axis
xticks/yticks (default=None): int or list
    Ticks along x- and y-axis specified as an integer, list of
    ticks positions, or list of tuples of the tick positions and labels
width (default=700)/height (default=300): int
    The width and height of the plot in pixels
attr_labels (default=None): bool
    Whether to use an xarray object's attributes as labels, defaults to
    None to allow best effort without throwing a warning. Set to True
    to see warning if the attrs can't be found, set to False to disable
    the behavior.
sort_date (default=True): bool
    Whether to sort the x-axis by date before plotting
symmetric (default=None): bool
    Whether the data are symmetric around zero. If left unset, the data
    will be checked for symmetry as long as the size is less than
    ``check_symmetric_max``.
check_symmetric_max (default=1000000):
    Size above which to stop checking for symmetry by default on the data.

Datashader options
------------------
aggregator (default=None):
    Aggregator to use when applying rasterize or datashade operation
    (valid options include 'mean', 'count', 'min', 'max' and more, and
    datashader reduction objects)
dynamic (default=True):
    Whether to return a dynamic plot which sends updates on widget and
    zoom/pan events or whether all the data should be embedded
    (warning: for large groupby operations embedded data can become
    very large if dynamic=False)
datashade (default=False):
    Whether to apply rasterization and shading (colormapping) using
    the Datashader library, returning an RGB object instead of 
    individual points
dynspread (default=False):
    For plots generated with datashade=True or rasterize=True, 
    automatically increase the point size when the data is sparse
    so that individual points become more visible
rasterize (default=False):
    Whether to apply rasterization using the Datashader library,
    returning an aggregated Image (to be colormapped by the 
    plotting backend) instead of individual points
x_sampling/y_sampling (default=None):
    Specifies the smallest allowed sampling interval along the x/y axis.

Geographic options
------------------
coastline (default=False):
    Whether to display a coastline on top of the plot, setting
    coastline='10m'/'50m'/'110m' specifies a specific scale.
crs (default=None):
    Coordinate reference system of the data specified as Cartopy
    CRS object, proj.4 string or EPSG code.
features (default=None): dict or list
    A list of features or a dictionary of features and the scale
    at which to render it. Available features include 'borders',
    'coastline', 'lakes', 'land', 'ocean', 'rivers' and 'states'.
    Available scales include '10m'/'50m'/'110m'.
geo (default=False):
    Whether the plot should be treated as geographic (and assume
    PlateCarree, i.e. lat/lon coordinates).
global_extent (default=False):
    Whether to expand the plot extent to span the whole globe.
project (default=False):
    Whether to project the data before plotting (adds initial
    overhead but avoids projecting data when plot is dynamically
    updated).
tiles (default=False):
    Whether to overlay the plot on a tile source. Tiles sources
    can be selected by name or a tiles object or class can be passed,
    the default is 'Wikipedia'.

Style options
-------------

alpha
bar_width
cmap
color
fill_alpha
fill_color
hover_alpha
hover_color
hover_fill_alpha
hover_fill_color
hover_line_alpha
hover_line_cap
hover_line_color
hover_line_dash
hover_line_join
hover_line_width
line_alpha
line_cap
line_color
line_dash
line_join
line_width
muted
muted_alpha
muted_color
muted_fill_alpha
muted_fill_color
muted_line_alpha
muted_line_cap
muted_line_color
muted_line_dash
muted_line_join
muted_line_width
nonselection_alpha
nonselection_color
nonselection_fill_alpha
nonselection_fill_color
nonselection_line_alpha
nonselection_line_cap
nonselection_line_color
nonselection_line_dash
nonselection_line_join
nonselection_line_width
selection_alpha
selection_color
selection_fill_alpha
selection_fill_color
selection_line_alpha
selection_line_cap
selection_line_color
selection_line_dash
selection_line_join
selection_line_width
visible

Examples list (to be updated)

• group, groupby, subplots, stacked.

[MarcSkovMadsen]

Many of the custom parameters are probably not in the function signature or documented.

[maximlt]

Well spotted! Yes touching the signature should be done with care, but documenting these parameters at least would be very nice.

[MarcSkovMadsen]

Is the long, generic docstring above really relevant for all kind of plots @maximlt . Does datashader and geo options really make sense for violin or errorbars for example?

[maximlt]

No indeed, they don't always make sense.