[Bug 56943] Implement an UMBrello (UML) plugin

[asutton at cs.kent.edu]

> ------- Additional Comments From j.jacobi at gmx.de  2003-11-23 16:20 -------
> Some time ago i talked to the umbrello developers, wether they would make
> it a kpart so it can be easily integrated in kdevelop, but they said that
> would imply too much changes to their "core" so that this won't happen
> anytime soon.

hi all, my name is andrew sutton. i've been a lurker for some time here
and sort of working with the umbrello folks. i'm probably a good candidate
for a point of contact for umbrello-kdevelop integration. so i'll throw
down some comments on the topic.

obviously the goal of integrating the two platforms would be to provide
some (hopefully high) degree of round-trip engineering. of course, there
might also be some more fun stuff like class diagrams or sequence diagrams
on demand.

one of the reasons we can't really do this at the moment is that umbrello
couples the uml data model with the ui pretty tightly and it's kind of
hard to separate. also, unfortunately, there haven't been any concrete
plans to separate the two. some time ago, there was a fair bit of
discussion on a complete rewrite for umbrello. i had a "decent" start on
it, but scrapped it because i was starting to lose focus on some of the
original design details. you can actually get the code form sourceforge
(checkout the umbrello2 module). one of the design goals was total
separation of data and ui, with all ui components embedded in kparts.

after some consideration, i turned my attention to the uml data model
itself and have been working to provide the most obnoxiously complete
implementation of the uml 1.x series of standards. i call it the Open
Modeling Framework (OMF). the goal of the OMF is to provide an
appliation-neutral API for working with UML - this means UML editing, code
import, code editing, automated layouts and just about anything else you'd
ever want to do with UML. my hope was that this software would provide the
impetus for a ground-up rewrite of umbrello and start fostering some
discussion and interoperation between umbrello and kdevelop.

i've created a very pre-alpha release of the software for inspection and
feedback. there aren't really any install instructions, but then its not
really ready for distribution either. unfortunately, i've been stalled in
my development effort by class work, but as its a major component of my
master's thesis, i expect work to resume in the next week or so.

anybody interested can download the software from:

http://www.cs.kent.edu/~asutton

keep in mind there isn't really any good documentation, although i've done
my best to document the code as well as possible. note that it's built on
qt, but not necessarily kde. i was hoping for some kind of portability,
but i'm starting to care less and less. any feedback is very welcome.

andrew sutton
asutton at cs.kent.edu