[Uml-devel] user story

[Andrew Sutton]

> > > add tipical "stereotypes" as enumeration, so that the user can choose
> > > from one of them, but leave the option to enter user-defined
> > > stereotypes as "free text", the way it is now.  (having the most common
> > > stereotypes as enum instead of free text could be helpfull for
> > > codegeneration)
>
> have you guys read the uml specification??
> I hadnt, but I downloaded it a couple of days ago and I've done a (very
> quick) scan through it....
> there *are* predefined stereotypes, which we should implement. But in the
> specification it says that stereotypes are something like classes, which
> means the user can sub-class stereotpes and create new ones,..
> very interesting whatis in the document.

yes. well... some of it. it's like a thousand pages long.

right. but you don't actually have to sub-class stereotype objects. they're 
defined in the standard such that defining *instances* of stereotype objects 
creates new stereotypes. its all very nebulous. read the notation section on 
stereotypes. toward the bottom it talks about tabular definition vs. model 
definition. its section 3.18.

> It also has some uml modells of uml itself... I think we should take a look
> at them and see if we need to adapt something for the next version.
> they are big changes but would allow us to make the tool really extensible,
> the way it should be.
> I'll read some more, think about it and then write some ideas... just wait
> a little. =)

see, i'm ahead of you :) i just started implementing the uml objects today. 
its painfully boring and i only understand about 90% of what i'm writing. i'm 
working on generalizations right now. anyway, with this model, we should be 
able to build profile extensions (like business modelling and process 
modelling) because they just define stereoypes. if we want REAL 
extensibility, we have to go back and implement the meta-object facility that 
uml is defined in. oh... its so terrible (really).

i'm going to write code for another hour and then post all my code back to the 
list for browsing. it's not really meant for direct inclusion into umbrello 
right now because there will be some integration design issues (like making 
all of these things QObjects and emitting various signals). but its a start.

andy