Bug: Fragment movement when message deleted

[Graham Bartlett]

EA version 7.0 815

Bug steps to reproduce:-
Create a sequence diagram.
Add some classes.
Add some messages.
Add a fragment surrounding some messages, such that there are other messages above the fragment.

Bug behaviour:-
Delete the message immediately above the fragment.  We would expect the fragment to move up in step with the messages it surrounds, or worst-case to stay where it is.  Actual behaviour is that although the messages move up, this fragment stays where it is.

Note that if messages are deleted further up the diagram (but not the message immediately above the fragment), all fragments lower down *do* move up in step.  Even if a message above a fragment is deleted, other fragments lower down move up in step with their contents.  Only the fragment immediately below the deleted message is affected by this bug.

[«Midnight»]

I looks like this one was corrected in build 816.

Take a look at http://www.sparxsystems.com/products/ea_history.html

David

[Graham Bartlett]

Thanks David.  Hmm, need to get our team all migrated to 818 then!

Graham.

[«Midnight»]

After you check the release notes and test the newer build of course.  

[7Alpha7]

I looks like this one was corrected in build 816.

Take a look at http://www.sparxsystems.com/products/ea_history.html

David

The bug already exists at least in the 825. In fact fragments seem not to be not aware of the messages they are supposed to contain : either deleting a surrounding message or deleting an object reference make the fragment be in the wrong place. There is no position and size adjustements.

[«Midnight»]

Thanks for closing that loop.

Graham: Take a look at beta 2, or 827 (whatever it is called) if it comes out immediately. And get your bug reports into Sparx guys! This forum is not the 'official' way to make bug reports; it is primarily for us, the user community, to exchange ideas and information. Making a bug report to Sparx gets the issue into their 'hopper' of things to look into.

We need this cleared up for 7.1 production.

David

[brownale2k]

I'm using 7.1.827 and find that the fragment box contents are even more unpredictable than they were in the previous 7.0.818.  Modifying an existing diagram with several fragment boxes below a candidate change has become a manually-intensive process.  I even tried turning on and off the Tools | Options | Behavior | Auto Group Elements but that did not seem to help.

I have to print out the diagram before I get started just so I can see what was inside each fragment before I move or delete one line.  I'm thinking about going back to the 7.0 version because its fragment anomolies were more predictable.

I'd prefer not going back to my old version.  Anyone have any suggestions of things to try before I revert back to an older version?

[spxea]

Hello,

I use 7.1.827 too and doing (and more precisely updating) sequence diagrams is really a nightmare (not only when message is deleted):

- when you move a fragment : the contents of the fragment seems to be linked to this fragment only if the move is slight. If it not (e.g. you want to drag this fragment and its content at the end of the diagram) the contents remains unmoved, and you drag an empty fragment; and at the same time, all the diagram is compressed (well, sometimes, because sometimes not...), and you have not the place (around the contents) to re-place the fragment (to re-attached the contents)...

Is there a method to do that?

=> if not, it would be very usefull to have the possibility to lock the contents of the fragment when you want to do this kind of thing, and to unlock when not...

- when some elements are moved down, all the elements below are moved down as well (->correct) EXCEPT sometimes for fragments that are below (->incorrect!). And in that case, the content of these fragments are moved down; so that part of the contents remains in the fragment, and some moves outside and it is getting a great mess...
And another very strange thing : sometimes, if there is a "ref" fragment above the moved elements, this ref-fragment is moved down as well!!!

Is there a method to use to avoid this behaviour?

If not, please, it would be urgent to correct these behaviours because it is getting very hard to do sequence diagram with EA...

Thanks.

[OwenInCanada]

Not sure exactly how this relates, but I use EA 828 (with SysML 1.0) and FYI there is a documented behaviour by which the ALT key allows the fragment to be moved independent of contents.

ALT-drag (i.e. ALT key + left mouse button + drag the mouse) on the fragment allows the fragment to be moved independent of the messages contained in it. This helped me sort out a few situations where positions got messed up, though it does not address all the positioning problems raised in this thread.

HTH,

/me

[Eve]

There is a known bug in 7.1 regarding updating sequence diagrams.  We expect this to be fixed in the next build.  If you want to check if any particular issue is caused by this, I would recommend email sparx support on the email address below.