Sparx Systems Forum

Enterprise Architect => Suggestions and Requests => Topic started by: Paolo F Cantoni on August 21, 2007, 10:40:45 pm

Title: IDEA: Additonal Alias Usage
Post by: Paolo F Cantoni on August 21, 2007, 10:40:45 pm

The Alias usage group of the Tools|Options...Diagram|Behavior dialog has two radio options:  (*) Alias only and (  ) Alias and Name.

When you select (*) Alias and Name, you get the display: (Alias)Name.

Now this is fine, so far as it goes. However, for another reason, we effectively had to swap the alias and the name.  To illustrate, we had an element named ComputationallyIndependentModel with alias CIM.  When we created an instance, the name became absurdly long SoftwareCIM:ComputationallyIndependentModel.  So we swapped the two name properties and therefore ended up with: SoftwareCIM:CIM.

However, in the class model, this appears as: (ComputationallyIndependentModel)CIM which isn't as good as: ComputationallyIndependentModel(CIM).

The set of possible options (and the dialog) should read:
(*) Alias only  (  ) (Alias)Name  (  ) Alias(Name)   (  ) (Name)Alias  (  ) Name(Alias)
Which should cover all eventualities :)

If we're going to make that change, it would be REALLY useful if this set of options were overridable on a per-diagram basis!  (Actually even if you weren't going to make the suggested change...)

Thoughts? Votes?
Paolo

[size=0]©2007 Paolo Cantoni, -Semantica-[/size]

Title: Re: IDEA: Additonal Alias Usage
Post by: thomaskilian on August 21, 2007, 11:12:51 pm

Or maybe the concept of shape scripting should be extended so it covers all these variations (plus our thoughts about configurable compartments). Generally I think that scripting is much more powerful to achieve the various demands than a million options.

My 0.02€

Title: Re: IDEA: Additonal Alias Usage
Post by: speekna on September 17, 2007, 06:40:53 am

Amen!
I model mostly for business requirements.  The longer the names in the model the more difficult it is to immediately grasp the contents.  OTOH, long names are important for clarity.  

We have 3 kind of names - Business name (long, complete, includes spaces), Report Name (an abbreviation of the business name; what non-technical people are used to seeing as column headings) and of course physical names.

For now, I want the first two.  Displaying both alias & business name is worse than just business name - too much to look at ...

I actually want 3 names - one for each of the above.  But I'll submit that separately...

Title: Re: IDEA: Additonal Alias Usage
Post by: «Midnight» on September 17, 2007, 08:22:35 am

Yes to all three ideas!

David