Messages

1

Suggestions and Requests / More flexibel report generator

« on: December 13, 2006, 04:47:35 am »

I've written an EA report generator in Delphi which in some ways is more flexibel than the build in one.

Each package can contain a special tagged value which indicates which rtf template to use for the package. This way you can generate one output document which contains different packages which all have their own layout/template.

Within the rtf templates special xml like tags are used to get access to the model. These xml tags support "filtering" which means that packages, elements and diagrams and the like can be selected by their attribute values (like names, id's, etc.) and boolean expression based on these values.

This way you are not limited to place scenario's, constraints, etc at one place in the document. Constructs like the following are possible:

<constraints of type 'pre-condition>

<scenarios of type 'Basic-Path'>

<constraints of type 'post-condition'>

<scenarios of type 'Alternate'>

Maybe this functionality could be added to EA:

- Each package should have a property which indicates which rtf template to use for the package.

- The rtf template constructs should be more flexibel so that they can be placed at more than one position in any order.

- The rtf template constructs should support filtering/selecting special type of elements by using boolean expressions on their property values.

It makes the report generator a lot more flexibel in my opinion.

Any thoughts anyone?

2

Suggestions and Requests / RTF Style bug

« on: August 16, 2006, 02:44:40 am »

I you have a numbered list and copy and past some text from one of the list entries to another, the style of the numbers is resetted.

I've included a style "standard" with 10px. I create the numbered list. Copy and paste something in the list and now the number styles are resetted to 11px ( the standard size of the "normal" style?)  

Any workaround for this?

Best regards,

Kobus

3

Suggestions and Requests / Question about virtual docs and rtf templates

« on: August 14, 2006, 01:18:49 am »

I don't know if this is already possible, but it would be nice if one could indicate which rtf template to use for a specific package or element added to a virtual document. This way if I add use cases and a class model for example, I could use a seperate rtf template for the use cases and the class model.

Is this possible?

Thanx.

Kobus

4

Suggestions and Requests / Re: Imported bullet & num list styles do not s

« on: August 10, 2006, 01:05:13 am »

The thing is however that when describing (use case) scenario's I want to refer to some steps by its number. Using your option however does not show the numbers when writing in EA.

I know of the suggestion of defining "text labels" in the use case to which to refer, but I always use the use case scenario's as a description of an activity diagram. Numbering the activities and use case steps the same makes it for the reader much more transparent of what is going on; and after all it's the reader/user we're writing for!

Greetings,

Kobus

5

Suggestions and Requests / Imported bullet & num list styles do not show

« on: August 10, 2006, 12:22:35 am »

I've created a rtf template in Word and imported it in EA. In the template I've specified special styles for bullet & numbered lists. The thing is however that when I use these styles the first entry will always start with a @ and the next ones with A., B., C. etc.

Why does EA not show the bullet or number specified in the style? When I look in the list overrides it all looks fine. (does anyone know how these overrides work?)

I want to use the specific styles to make sure that when integrating EA generated reports with my own Word documents, they are based on the same template and look the same.

Any thoughts anyone?

greetings,

Kobus.

6

Suggestions and Requests / Document/RTF Editor: Multiple row/column insert

« on: July 27, 2006, 02:38:25 am »

It would be nice if one could insert multiple extra rows/columns at once using popup menu -> table -> insert row. Now I've to insert them one-by-one.

Thanx.

Kobus

7

Suggestions and Requests / Documentation of "hidden/special" attrib

« on: July 24, 2006, 05:33:15 am »

It would be nice if all "hidden/special" attributes of elements were documented!

See topic Shape Script in Profile
(http://www.sparxsystems.com.au/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.pl?board=general;action=display;num=1153493144) in which this is dicussed too.

Greetings,

Kobus.

8

Suggestions and Requests / Is the RTF generator the way to go for EA?

« on: June 01, 2005, 01:04:41 am »

Reading all the comments in this forum about the new RTF generator I'm questioning if this is the right way to go! I presume that most of us use a very good text editor already (MS-Word, Open Office). Shouldn't Sparx invest their efforts in making better integration with these tools instead of making their own?

For example, why not making the templates in these editors instead of trying to match all the functionality of those editors! The new rtf editor is nice, but by no means enough to make real nice documents like the onces which can be produced with MS Word or Open Office. And it will take some time before the rtf editor is as stable as these text editors and has the same functionality.

Another thing is the use of subdocuments which is recommended. Maybe I'm doing something wrong, but subdocuments use absolute paths which can cause problems when you have multiple developers in your team which each must be able to generate the document, or if you want to publish the document on a website (the subdocuments must be in the same directory location on all those machines to work  ). I know this isn't an EA issue; but still it effects useability.  So why not using Word automation en Word templates to generate documents?

I intend (and started) to develop an add-in which uses virtual documents and Word automation to generate documents. Using tags, a main Word document is associated with a virtual document. By using the same principle a template (don't know if I will use the new EA templates or use my own in Word) and a location marker is associated with each package in the virtual document. The location marker indicates where in the main document the package should be inserted. When generating a virtual document the main document and packages are combined and saved as one seperate document which can be distributed. This way it is easy to update a document, and still produce one output file. Well anyhow, that's the global idea  

Anyone any thoughts or suggestions?

9

Suggestions and Requests / Re: RTF support in notes and scenario

« on: May 26, 2005, 03:08:47 am »

I know that some people are never satisfied; I'm just behaving like those users we are building computer systems for.....  

Using some wiki-style markup is fine by me if that's better for automation. In the EA user interface however, i would like to see the text actually presented bold, italic etc. In other words I would like a WYSIWYG editor with some buttons for making words or text bold, italic and making lists. How the text is saved internally doesn't really matter to me, but if the text is exported to rtf it should convert the internal format to rtf.....

10

Suggestions and Requests / RTF support in notes and scenario

« on: May 26, 2005, 01:07:36 am »

The new rtf template support is great. I'm a little disappointed however that there's still no proper support for rtf in notes and scenario properties. It would be nice if we could at least use bold, underline, italic, bulleted and numered lists. This way the layout of these properties (which are often very important because these can contain a lot of important information which much be structured) can be managed.

11

Suggestions and Requests / Child diagram of child element print error

« on: June 27, 2005, 02:42:54 am »

In the new rtf generator you can document child elements of a element. But it seems that if this child element itself has child elements or diagrams, these don't get printed!  

For example: I've got an use-case which has an activity diagram to explain the flow. One of the activities on this diagram is a sub-activity with it's own activity diagram. The diagram of the sub-activity doesn't get printed!

Is there a way to indicate which element sections to include for child elements? Am I doing something wrong?  

12

Suggestions and Requests / Collection in sequence diagram?

« on: June 08, 2005, 12:53:36 am »

Is it possible to display an object as a collection in the way often is seen in uml books: two rectangles with a slightly different offset.

13

Suggestions and Requests / RTF template inheritence instead of copy

« on: May 30, 2005, 05:37:04 am »

I would like to see a rtf template inheritence instead of copy. This way you can make changes in a base template (for example the normal font, or heading font) which will effect all templates based on this base template automatically.

14

General Board / Re: Shape Script in Profile

« on: July 24, 2006, 05:34:13 am »

Have done so.

Thanx all.

15

General Board / Re: Shape Script in Profile

« on: July 23, 2006, 11:34:55 pm »

Thanx.

Is there a overview of all these "hidden/special" attributes?