[Uml-devel] Usability

[P. Fleury]

Hi Paul !

For your information, I have also been playing with your code a little 
bit. My first exercice to get used to KDevelop, your code and C++ again 
(have done Java for quite a long time now...) has been to implement a 
proper DragUMLObject so that when drag-n-drop is used from a UMLObject 
onto something that can actually use it, it works (I used MIME type 
application/x-uml). But it does not put the text (your string-packaged 
object ID) into a text box (which your version does...). I also have 
created a little class which gets the object type and id in the 
constructor and mangles this into something we can use within the DnD. 
This removes all the parsing code, found in a few places for DnD, and 
groups it into one single place. And as the scheme is now only within 
this class, I have simplified it a bit (type and id no longer human 
readable, and fixed positions, make it straight forward). There is a 
toString() methjod, so you can still print it for debugging purpose :-)

I have also tried to convert the content of ot.h into some classes, 
trying to abstract the decision code you have in a lot of places.
I think it would be easier to extend the program if we have an object 
and can then ask this object something like   
object.canContain(otherObject) and it would return true if the first is 
a graph and the other one an object, with the constraints for use cases 
of course. If new objects are used (new UML graph type added), this 
would be easier to maintain. However, your constants are use all over 
the place, and quite a few of them have uses in different semantic 
contexts (either as type marker, menu index, etc.)...

As you are currently not actively working on this (which will change in 
the future, as you tell us !) I did not go forward in changing tons of 
places, just to see that you have also changed a lot of things in the 
next version...

I also have been looking in making uml a Koffice part, but I only got 
the documentation to make it a KPart. Making it a KPart should not be a 
too big task, and Kopart , well I don't know. But it would be nice 
(currently the copy/paste works fine, but KWord can insert pictures only 
in float, so it appears at random places in the document and it is a bit 
a pain to fetch it and put it in the right position in the text. So it 
is not really a uml problem :-)

Anyhow, if you are interested, I can give you a patch after you have 
released the next version (I will "port" my changes to the new version).

Thanks for bringing us this tool. I have tried to use kivio, just to 
almost immediately switch back to uml. You would just need to support 
stylesheets, and you have your own kivio !

Pascal

Paul Hensgen wrote:

>Hi,
>
>Any help would be welcomed Thomas.
>
>Andrea is right.  Next Thursday is my last exam and I will be starting to
>code again.
>
>A few notes for anyone thats interested.
>
>My monitor, burner and hdd have blown up, I think there must have been a
>power overload here.  I have a backup of the code, but I have lost all my
>e-mails.
>
>So anyone who has sent patches or suggestions, I have lost them.
>
>Don't send anything yet as I have win XP installed at the moment.  I have to
>get used to using it as I have alot of people ask me for help.
>
>I will be putting Linux back on after my last exam.
>
>The first things I will be looking at are:
>
>* Change QWidget over to QCanvas class.  Alot of programming here I think.
>
>* Make associations global. i.e. Associations will be automatic for all
>diagrams.
>
>* Change class designs abit - yet to decide.
>
>* State diagrams added.
>
>I hope this will only take a week.
>
>Paul
>
>
>_______________________________________________
>Uml-devel mailing list
>umbrello-devel at kde.org
>https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/umbrello-devel
>