Messages

1

General Board / Re: Am I the only one who hates the template edito

« on: November 30, 2006, 09:28:22 pm »

To add to the documentation issues/requests...

Some more thorough explanation, in particular, of the RTF Document Options' "Adjust Heading Levels" feature, and how it actually interacts with "Heading N" styles applied within the template, would be extremely helpful to our efforts to produce .  I think, in spite of the lack of documentation clarity, I've managed to figure out how this works, but it took a lot of testing and tinkering to do so...

Thanks!

2

General Board / Re: Am I the only one who hates the template edito

« on: November 26, 2006, 08:54:35 pm »

You will be happy to know that the next build of EA (801) will have improvements to the RTF editor.

Now that would be worth grabbing an update for.

Any clues on what specific improvements are involved?

3

General Board / Re: Am I the only one who hates the template edito

« on: November 08, 2006, 11:26:53 am »

The RTF template editor is painful.  I've lost hours of work when templates stop working for no reason. E.g. starting with a template, modifying it, saving a copy under a different name and getting different output.  The cut/paste when tags are selected is broken/inconsistent.  The outline in the left hand side does not offer the flexibility we require. The RTF editor sucks (but thats a different rant). Random elements can't be included by the template editor (e.g. the matrix views). We've had to hire a consultant to get documents out of the jet database directly because the RTF generation provided with EA is so bad. This will cost much much more than the actual cost of EA, and we probably would have been better off just using another tool from the start.

I can echo most of these comments.  Our experience has not been quite this bad (although we haven't been using it very long), but it does have its share of frustrations due to the fickle instability of various elements of the RTF templating.

Meanwhile, we love EA for its modelling capabilities and relative ease of use.  The RTF generator is conceptually an extremely useful extension of this program, as there are many cases where we need to be able to produce our information in document form for easier review by a larger audience, but at this point, we seem to be spending at least as much time working on the templates and generation process as we are on the modelling itself.    

I'd love to hear from someone at Sparx whether there are any plans to strengthen EA's RTF generator, or replace it, or...?

4

General Board / Re: Problem with RTF template (modified)

« on: November 08, 2006, 11:20:46 am »

I still have occasional odd problems with fields in the EA RTF document templates losing their identity (suddenly reverting to plain text instead of field markers), or the reverse (plain text suddenly being recognized as special text that cannot be editted), and strange issues with embedded headings no longer indenting correctly in EA 6.5, etc.  Overall, the RTF generator still seems relatively primitive and unstable, and I'm wondering if there're any plans for strengthening this potentially extremely useful feature in the future...

5

General Board / Re: Bugs in 799 build

« on: November 08, 2006, 06:02:33 pm »

It may save sparx time if (registered?) users could search the "current bug list" for a version to save logging / raising yet another instance of that bug via these forums...

Exactly what I was thinking...  

6

General Board / Re: Bugs in 799 build

« on: November 08, 2006, 11:16:33 am »

Semi-Related Question:
Is there someplace where we can look up what bugs have been reported/recognized in the current EA release and their status (working on it, corrected in next build, etc.)?  It would probably help a lot of us who are running into issues with EA 6.5 and wondering...

7

General Board / Re: Full package name in RTF documentation

« on: November 08, 2006, 11:12:37 am »

I've run into examples of when I'd like to be able to do something like this, as well.  I don't suppose there's any word on whether this might become an option someday?

8

General Board / Re: EA 6.5: Diagram Elements and Wrapping Text

« on: October 19, 2006, 01:21:39 pm »

Check other posts from the previous 24 hours or so. Something like this was reported, and is apparently resolved for the next build (which should be 800).

Will do.  Thanks!

9

General Board / EA 6.5: Diagram Elements and Wrapping Text

« on: October 19, 2006, 11:53:57 am »

This may seem like a trivial issue offhand, but...

I just upgraded my EA 6.1 install to EA 6.5.  Loading up a recent model containing a somewhat complex network diagram, the first thing I noticed is that many of the node element boxes on the diagram are significantly horizontally larger than they previously were, crowding the diagram significantly.  It turns out that many of the node names, which happily wrapped within their boxes before, now refuse to wrap at all, thus horizontally extending the boxes.

Most of the offending node names are in the form of domain or network addresses, such as "blah.blah.blah".  In EA 6.1, these used the dots as valid wrapping points when needed to fit inside the box size.  In EA 6.5, they apparently no longer do this.

While not a functional issue per se, this little display-behavior alternation will significantly affect the appearance and usability of some of our existing diagrams... and/or require that I spend a bunch of additional time re-cleaning them up with this additional display restriction...

Thoughts?  Is there a configuration option to correct this that I just haven't found yet?  Etc?

10

General Board / Connector label background color

« on: October 28, 2003, 10:48:18 am »

This may seem a relatively minor issue, but....

The label text on connector lines appears to use the "Paper" color setting ("Tools" > "Options" > "Standard Colors") as their background color.  This probably makes sense in many cases, but...

If my connector lines are between objects within a Boundary area, and that Boundary has its own background color, the connector's text's background color shows up around the text over the Boundary's background color, looking rather clumsy.

Is there a way to set the background of connector line texts (individually or, preferably, all of 'em) to be transparent?  (If not, shouldn't there be?)

I hope I'm not too unclear....

11

Automation Interface, Add-Ins and Tools / Re: Document Generation

« on: December 11, 2006, 11:36:24 am »

BTW there is no posibility to delete a Style defined in a Template or at least I didn't found it.

Same here.  This seems like a major (and rather frustrating) oversight in the RTF Template interface...

12

Automation Interface, Add-Ins and Tools / Re: Document Generation

« on: December 11, 2006, 11:24:35 am »

I have made a diagram that is to long. So, when I generate the documentation the picture is to small and is very unusefull.

You may also want to consider splitting the diagram up logically, perhaps into one high-level overview diagram and then sectional close-up diagram views.  (Odd are, if it's such that it cannot be rendered clearly on one page, then it's likely that there's a lot for a human to absorb in that one diagram, as well.)

Whether that's a viable option will depend on your circumstances, of course...