[Uml-devel] UML for documentation and other feature requests

[Manuel Lemos]

Hello Andrea,

On 20-Oct-01 05:50:06, you wrote:

>Hello Manuel,
>I wrote this mail to say that I agree with you, a better and integrated use
>case management would be foundamental to use "uml modeller" as a
>support for the whole development cycle. The documentation could be
>generated in HTML or KWord form... well, using a proper builder pattern,
>in every format you want to program.
>But I think it should be developed as an integral part of uml modeller,
>not as a scripting extension. The use case lines should be configurable
>by means of a simple text file, thought... not everybody use the use
>cases in the same way.

Those were 2 suggestions.  The ability of documenting use cases as I
described below was one, and the adoption of an embedded scripting language
(or maybe more than one to please different tastes) is another suggestion.

If UML program lets you document use cases as I described, even if it does
not generate that documentation in any format, a scripting language with a
capable set of commands could be used by somebody else to extract the
necessary information from the projects and process it in any form to
generate documentation or make some other kind of analysis.

Regards,
Manuel Lemos

>> Hello,
>>
>> This UML modeller program looks promising but it lacks of key feature to
>> motivate to use it.
>>
>> In the company that I work for we use UML for documenting projects in
>> such way that we use the diagrams and use case documentation to present
>> to the end users so they can validate them and sign on printed versions
>> of the documentation to certify that it what they requested.
>>
>> Your UML program is not yet up to the point to use it to document
>> projects the way we need. It seems it works like Rational Rose. The
>> problem is that it is not good enough because the level of detail of use
>> cases (just a text box) is not sufficient. What happens is that most
>> people end up copying and pasting diagrams in word processors and
>> complement the lack of details in the use case documentation with text
>> entered in the word processor.
>>
>> Therefore, a development manager here has designed a program in VBA for
>> Excel that lets you design all sorts of UML diagrams and document use
>> cases with the following details: Title, Purpose, Actors list,
>> Pre-conditions, Post-Conditions, Activation, Steps of each scenary,
>> Requirements, Activity diagrams, Prototypes of the screens of the user
>> interface. Most of these details are plain text fields, but having them
>> all sorted this way makes an hell of a difference in the productivity of
>> the project designers.
>>
>> Other than that, this program generates a whole document with table of
>> contents with all diagrams and use case documentation that is fully
>> hyper linked, ie, just click on the use case graphic in the diagram and
>> it jumps to the page that documents that use case.
>>
>> The real problem is that this program is all in Excel and even if I
>> wanted to use Microsoft software, I could not use the software for my
>> own project because it belongs to our employer. So, it would be great if
>> your UML program could work like this program. Just let me know if you
>> would like to see some screenshots (it is in Portuguese though).
>>
>> Other than that, I think that it will be very hard for you and it will
>> take you a long time if you try to implement all the features that
>> people request to you. So I suggest that you embed some sort of
>> scripting language that lets people write scripts that command your
>> program. It would let people write macros that would command the program
>> just as if somebody would be controlling it via the GUI. It would be
>> like VBA for UML except that would be some other free language. It could
>> be TCL, which was originally thought for embedding scripting
>> capabilities in applications, but it could be anything else.
>>
>> Once I used Amiga computers that had a powerful applications scripting
>> language named ARexx. It would let external scripts control applications
>> for a scripting shell that would run outside the programs. This was
>> great because it would let users extend applications in ways that the
>> developers could not antecipate.
>>
>> I have more suggestions but for now these should give you something to
>> think about.
>>
>>
>> Keep up the good work,
>> Manuel Lemos
>>
>> PS. have you thought about developing the program in such way that it
>> could also run on Windows. It seemed to me that if you used GTK you
>> could easily compile it to run under Windows all with free software.
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Uml-devel mailing list
>> umbrello-devel at kde.org
>> https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/umbrello-devel

>_______________________________________________
>Uml-devel mailing list
>umbrello-devel at kde.org
>https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/umbrello-devel




Regards,
Manuel Lemos

Web Programming Components using PHP Classes.
Look at: http://phpclasses.UpperDesign.com/?user=mlemos@acm.org
--
E-mail: mlemos at acm.org
URL: http://www.mlemos.e-na.net/
PGP key: http://www.mlemos.e-na.net/ManuelLemos.pgp
--