Messages

1

Suggestions and Requests / Re: Tabbed MDI Windows for Diagrams

« on: August 06, 2003, 02:52:39 am »

I'd second this.  Some way of being able to have 2 diagrams on screen at once (or at least to swap between them easily without saving).

2

Suggestions and Requests / Sequence Diagram Suggestions

« on: August 06, 2003, 02:50:55 am »

I've just bought EA and I'm starting to use it for real.  Overall, it's seems like it's a great tool.

A few annoyances related to sequence diagrams are:

1. You can't resize the object icon vertically.  You can make it wider but not deeper.  Given how valuable horizontal space is on a sequence diagram, I often want to make object boxes deeper to get the names into the box.

2. It's quite common to want to attach a note to part of a sequence diagram.  The snag with EA's note links is that they seem to only anchor to the edge of classes and objects.  For an object on a sequence diagram object this means that the link ends hanging in space as the edge of the object is invisible below the object box.  I'd like to be able to attach a note to a message or a lifeline (in fact anything really) rather than just the objects.

Cheers,

Eoin.

3

Suggestions and Requests / Re: Stereotype update strangeness

« on: August 12, 2003, 09:41:38 am »

I don't think an instance object should ever have a different stereotype than its parent class.

I certainly wouldn't argue with this - I never use different stereotypes on instances either.  In either case, I'd be really happy of stereotype updates could cascade from class to instances though!

Eoin.

4

Suggestions and Requests / Stereotype update strangeness

« on: August 06, 2003, 03:02:33 am »

If a class is marked with a stereotype and you place an instance of that class on a diagram, the object is marked with the same stereotype.  This seems sensible.

There is however a slight problem related to updating.  If you change the stereotype of the class, none of the related objects have their stereotypes changed.

I think I understand why this is (so that the objects can have different stereotypes to their parent classes).  However, when you haven't changed the stereotypes in the instances, this is pretty surprising.

Could EA propagate the stereotype name change to all instances of the class that haven't had their stereotypes changed?

Cheers,

Eoin.

5

Suggestions and Requests / Stereotype Display Suggestion (a la Rose)

« on: August 06, 2003, 02:58:48 am »

I hate to admit that there is something good in Rose, but it does have a handy stereotype display facility that would be nice to have in EA ...

When you select a stereotype in EA, the icon used on the diagram changes (if the stereotype is associated with an icon of course).  This is fine and seems to work as expected.  At the diagram level you can switch this off and revert to using "<<name>>" markers.

There is however a nice feature in Rose where you can opt to use the standard class icons but to have them "marked" with the associated stereotype icon (in minature) in the top right hand corner (assuming an icon exists).

This option to me is the best of both worlds as you can get visual feedback as to the type of class, but the class diagram still looks recognisable.

This would be great to have in EA!

Cheers,

Eoin.