# Undocumented postaction attribute

**URL:** <https://forum.graphviz.org/t/undocumented-postaction-attribute/1991>\
**Category:** Uncategorized\
**Created:** [January 25, 2024, 1:30pm UTC](https://forum.graphviz.org/t/undocumented-postaction-attribute/1991 "2024-01-25T13:30:26Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![scnorth](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/graphviz/user_avatar/forum.graphviz.org/scnorth/32/89_2.png) [@scnorth](https://forum.graphviz.org/u/scnorth)\
**Post date:** [January 25, 2024, 1:30pm UTC](https://forum.graphviz.org/t/undocumented-postaction-attribute/1991/1 "2024-01-25T13:30:26Z")

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I noticed the [postaction attribute](https://gitlab.com/graphviz/graphviz/-/blob/main/lib/common/input.c?ref_type=heads#L610). I even slightly remember writing this code. But why? It was definitely to solve a specific problem. Also, I thought we grepped all the attributes out of the source, hoping to make sure they are all documented, but I can’t find anything about this. Weird.

There might be a hard drive around here with a lot of email from that era…

Actually I was originally searching for anything about text wrapping (at least in HTML), since this keeps coming up. It would be nice if this can be supported without pretending to implement some of CSS, too.

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**Author:** ![steveroush](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a9adbd/32.png) [@steveroush](https://forum.graphviz.org/u/steveroush)\
**Post date:** [January 25, 2024, 2:57pm UTC](https://forum.graphviz.org/t/undocumented-postaction-attribute/1991/2 "2024-01-25T14:57:57Z")

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- Here is a link to the documentation issue that includes **postaction** : [Document undocumented attributes (#75) · Issues · graphviz / graphviz.gitlab.io · GitLab](https://gitlab.com/graphviz/graphviz.gitlab.io/-/issues/75)
- There is nothing in the old mailing lists ([MARC: Mailing list ARChives](https://marc.info/?l=graphviz-devel) & [MARC: Mailing list ARChives](https://marc.info/?l=graphviz-interest))
- Google seems to say there is some reference in here([GitHub - ellson/MOTHBALLED-graphviz: Moved to https://gitlab.com/graphviz/graphviz](https://github.com/ellson/MOTHBALLED-graphviz)) but I can’t find it

I don’t remember seeing anything about internally implementing word wrap, just pre/post processors

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**Author:** ![steveroush](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a9adbd/32.png) [@steveroush](https://forum.graphviz.org/u/steveroush)\
**Post date:** [January 27, 2024, 2:13am UTC](https://forum.graphviz.org/t/undocumented-postaction-attribute/1991/3 "2024-01-27T02:13:09Z")

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See word wrap comment here: [Text wrapping in Graphviz? - #12 by steveroush](https://forum.graphviz.org/t/text-wrapping-in-graphviz/753/12)

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**Author:** ![scnorth](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/graphviz/user_avatar/forum.graphviz.org/scnorth/32/89_2.png) [@scnorth](https://forum.graphviz.org/u/scnorth)\
**Post date:** [January 27, 2024, 11:12pm UTC](https://forum.graphviz.org/t/undocumented-postaction-attribute/1991/4 "2024-01-27T23:12:44Z")

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I see. We wanted a create way to say, on the command line, draw this graph and no matter what the file says, set `somenode [color=blue]`.