Bezier is terrible

[adama]

Sparx needs to fix Bezier curves.  The bezier curves are unsatisfying in general, but made much worse because the ends attach to a bounding box (invisible) that does NOT MATCH the target shape.  Even in Data Flow Diagrams, the data flow between processes (ellipses) is impossible to make tangent in certain angles/points.  It's like the bounding box is for a rectangle.

This makes my diagrams practically unusable as communication devices with the customer, and costs me huge amounts of time for zero return, unnecessarily.

I'm guessing the problem relates to the fact that the supertype for a DFD Process is an Activity, and the shape for an Activity is a rectangle.

[qwerty]

In EA connectors always attach to a virtual rectangle formed element. Just try with a use case.

q.

[adama]

Qwerty, thanks for that verification.  This is a significant deficiency, from my perspective.  I knew the move from Visio would be somewhat problematic, but this is a real impediment.  The workaround would be to override the appearance using a rectangular shape script or alternative rectangular stereotype. Not very satisfying.

[qwerty]

From a drawing perspective you are right. Visio can handle those things much better. And if EA would implement them, this would be marvelous. But I suspect, the price for EA would also be more reaching outer space. So I prefer staying on ground here. Most UML elements are more rectangular than round, so in general this deficiency can be accepted.

q.

[skiwi]

I'm with adama on this, I do think that for any connector the virtual bounding shape could be more appropriate.


And while we are at it could we have Bezier become a proper "Line Style"