Messages

1

General Board / Re: How can one reset the GUI?

« on: June 15, 2020, 07:20:22 am »

Never mind! I managed to select an item and clicked "Show in Project Browser" and suddenly a different window opened that contained the Project Browser! I must have somehow managed to "tear" that sub-window off EAs main window (plus apparently to close it). Once the Project Browser had surfaced again I was then able to re-attach it to its normal position and now I am fine again.
What an odd experience! Esp. that this setting even survived a complete program re-install!

2

General Board / How can one reset the GUI?

« on: June 15, 2020, 07:10:00 am »

It's a bit embarrassing but I somehow managed to corrupt my EA GUI such that there is no more Project Browser! How can I get that back? When I open a project there is the name of the root node in the white top line. If I click on the right triangle I get a list of direct children nodes and continuing so I can actually navigate that tree (so that tree or its data) is apparently still there but I don't get a complete visual representation of that tree?!? Where has the project browser gone?

A similar effect with the toolbox: If I navigate to a diagram and click onto the << at the top right there is also no toolbox appearing, just a white pane about an inch wide is opening. But it's empty (i.e. white)!

Where have all those GUI elements disappeared?!? After fiddling with that for a while I decided to de- and re-installed EA (v15.1.1529) but after the reinstallation I got the exact same situation when opening the project that I had been working with! I then suspected it was the project that's corrupted but even opening the EA Example project doesn't look any better! No Project browser!

What can I do to get a properly working EA again??? How can one reset the GUI to factory settings?

3

General Board / Zoom in/out using scrollwheel not working in EA 15.1! What could cause this?

« on: June 15, 2020, 03:12:42 am »

For some strange reason the zooming into/out-of a diagram doesn't work for me! According to the manual (and also my memory) this is supposed to work by pressing the Ctrl-key and turning the mouse wheel up and down. However, after installing the latest version (v15.1.1529) this doesn't work anymore! Also with Ctrl key pressed the diagram pans up and down instead of changing the zoom factor. This makes editing some diagrams almost impossible!

What could cause this and how to fix this?

PS: Needless to say that my mouse's scroll wheel works perfectly fine and the very same zooming into/out-of gesture works fine as one would expect in other applications (e.g. Office apps like Word or Outlook or in all my browsers (Edge, FF, Chrome)).

4

General Board / Re: Aggregates connector is shown the wrong way around

« on: October 09, 2018, 07:32:09 pm »

I haven't checked back on this question for a while and only now just did.

Reading through the appends so far I come to the conclusion that the intention seems to be to leave this unchanged and thus IMHO incorrect (with respect to common and official documentations of UML 2.x) and rather to avoid using this association at all. I couldn't agree less!

Unhappy customer :-(

5

General Board / Aggregates connector is shown the wrong way around

« on: August 14, 2018, 06:45:29 pm »

It is a long-standing peculiarity that the "Aggregates"-connectors in EA's class diagram were by default shown/drawn the wrong way around, i.e. the diamond was drawn at the target side, not on the source side. Fortunately there used to be a flag in the preferences (Pref's -> Links -> Association default - source --> target) that allowed to swap (i.e. correct) that behavior.
That flag is still there but in the v13.0 and also 13.5 this flag has apparently no effect, i.e. that connector is shown the wrong way round, regardless of whether that flag is checked or not.

To see, which way these connectors ought to be drawn correctly just have a look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Class_diagram or at https://www.uml-diagrams.org/composition.html?context=class-diagrams.

Is there some secret sauce to tweak EA to create correct UML class diagrams or does one now have to live with that bug?

6

General Board / How to hide {abstract} annotation?

« on: May 17, 2018, 05:52:27 pm »

I am using EA (v13) on two different systems. On one, when I open a class-diagram for some reason all (Java-)interfaces show an annotation "{abstract}" below the name. Of course interfaces ARE abstract, but this is redundant visual clutter, so I would like to hide this annotation. Where/how can I disable the display of these annotations (or whatever they might be called in EA) by default, i.e. for ALL diagrams.

Similar with the <<interface>> annotation above the name. Interfaces have already a different color, so no real need to display that, either. How/where do I adjust the visibility?

Sorry for asking these probably stupid questions, but since Sparx keeps moving toolbar items and settings menus around with each new version I have a harder and harder time finding things and navigating this beast. And the "help" is really none...

7

General Board / How to adjust code page for Java source code import?

« on: August 22, 2017, 11:48:44 pm »

I am frequently importing Java source code into class models in order to have a starting point when creating diagrams.
When doing so, then EA parses Javadoc comments into class/interface descriptions.

This is in principle a *very* good idea, however, in many comments our developers used national characters (Umlauts) and these get messed up and are replaced with several characters of gibberish each (and they are emitted such, if I re-generate/update the source file after that).

In an elder EA Manual and also an append on StackOverflow that I googled one can read about an Option in the dialog Tools -> Source Code Engineering (which looks like the one now in Start -> Preferences -> Source Code Engineering) that should allow to adjust the code page being used when reading/emitting source code. That option has apparently disappeared along the journey to v13.5. Is that option still available or is it gone?
Our source code is written using UTF-8, in case this important.

8

Automation Interface, Add-Ins and Tools / Neither MDG Link nor MDG Integration for Eclipse are working

« on: August 22, 2017, 06:16:15 am »

As you probably know, neither MDG Link nor MDG Integration for Eclipse work with Eclipse 4.7+ (Oxygen).
I guess these two EA extensions are "dead", right? There hasn't been any update for these extensions since at least 2011.

Or is there any chance or trick to get these working?
Having to re-enter all the details of our classes by hand is really tedious and so superfluous!

9

Suggestions and Requests / links to local files should allow for env.vars

« on: July 30, 2014, 10:08:35 pm »

It would be nice, if a link to a local file would allow for environment variable substitution. This would allow to define links to local files that would work on different machines provided that each user has the corresponding env-var defined properly, e.g.:

${SVN_LOCAL_DIR}/some_dir/some_file.docx

10

Suggestions and Requests / Re: Copy-pasting a UI element only gives errror ms

« on: November 05, 2010, 01:06:16 am »

Are you expecting EA to "just know" that you are drawing another dialog instead of re-using the element?
...

I think EA's behavior is correct in this instance.
If I use the "normal" copy I don't want to create duplicate of an element, but just show that element on my diagram....

I contradict! IMHO this not correct! If - in whatever program, in this case in an EA diagram - I select an object and then press Ctrl-C followed by Ctrl-V I expect to create/paste a copy of that object. If an exact copy is semantically not allowed (e.g. names must be unique), then I expect a dialog to pop up asking me for an alternative name or the program to automatically create a copy with a different name, just as e.g. the Explorer (on windows) creates a name with "-copy" suffix. I don't see why that should be impossible "magic"...

Michael

11

Suggestions and Requests / Copy-pasting a UI element only gives errror msg.

« on: September 21, 2010, 04:59:10 am »

When trying to duplicate a UI element (in a UI Model) one currently only gets an error message:
---------------------------
This diagram already contains an instance of the element you are trying to paste.
Currently only one instance is supported, so you cannot paste the element here.
---------------------------
%$#@!
I am trying to draw a couple of dialogs which share many features. It would really be nice if one could first draw one and then duplicate that and continue by changing one of them. Why can't EA not simply give the pasted elements new names (e.g with some name suffix "-2" or whatever but ideally asking for a new name or name-prefix) and then paste that element into the diagram? It's tedious to have to start from nothing each time again!
Every simple paint program can do better and this un-invites from doing such sketches in EA.

Michael

12

Suggestions and Requests / Re: Notes in Sequencediagrams now printing!

« on: September 11, 2007, 04:30:45 am »

Hi!
Very odd: I called up the Tools => Options dialog and inspected the settings just to find that they were all as I wanted them (i.e. I didn't actually change anything), but when I then printed again after this exercise, the notes printed fine.

So - I am not really aware of having "done" or modified anything, but things seem to print OK now.

If that should change again, I'll report back here.

Cheers and thanks,
Michael

13

Suggestions and Requests / Notes in Sequencediagrams not printing

« on: September 11, 2007, 01:34:04 am »

Hello, I bought a license of EA 7.0 begin of last week. Now I just noticed, that when I print out sequence diagrams, the content (i.e. the text) of all notes that I had attached to misc. messages is not printed. In the trial version this had worked without problems.

It's really the same diagram, I only printed it out again to get rid of the "Unregistered trial version" backdrop.

I had re-installed the trial version before installing the newly downloaded full copy, in case this matters.

Michael

14

Suggestions and Requests / Missing: printing with different scales.

« on: September 06, 2007, 03:48:51 am »

I am missing the capability to print a diagram in different zoom factors. I drew a large diagram that would require me to glue together 18 pages :-(. I would like to be able to scale that down for printing so that it only requires, say, 6 pages (even if that means that I need a lense to read the text). But nowhere did I find such a scaling factor for printing. Am I missing something?

Oh - and I also don't quite understand, why all fields to adjust margins in page setup are grayed out and apparently fixed at 1 inch (which I find a bit too much...). Is this "not yet implemented" or what's causing this?

Michael

15

Suggestions and Requests / Re: left/right scroll using a tilt-wheel mouse

« on: September 06, 2007, 03:42:36 am »

... Disable the option and the middle button allows you to move something by "grabbing it" and finally "dropping" it when done.

Ah - now I got it! Now it works exactly as I like it - perfect!