[Uml-devel] Re: karbon14 and uml

[Andrew Sutton]

> I am not really familiar with both UM nor Konqueror irtual file systems, so
> I could be wrong.
> I think it would be possible to implement a kioslave for XMI files
> (kio_xml), which works as virtual file system, including for browsing XML
> files in things like a file save box and Konqueror itself.

that's kind of what i was thinking about... i'm just wondering where to tie in 
the actual editor part. anyways, its all this reasarch i'm doing. i'm getting 
some really interesting ideas (i won't say good just yet :) on how things 
could work.

> I don't think it wuld be sufficient to be implemented as only means to
> access UML / XMI diagrams. Konqueror is defined as a browser, i.e. plugins
> are supposed to "display" data. It is assumed that you still provide an
> "editor" of your data.
> The problem with XMI and UML as I understand it is that you need another
> display part, something like "view hierarchy", i.e. show the lists and
> trees of related elements.

yes an no. alot of the research i've been doing has been about architecture 
browsers. in terms of uml, we need to figure out how to navigate from view to 
view in order to create something more web-like. there's actually a couple 
different ways to do this. they're all in my paper that i meant to print to 
pdf and post to my web page. forgot. maybe tomorrow.

> Perhaps it would be best to implement a generic list view part for XMI
> files using the KIO framework, ie. I am able to browse UML / XMI documents
> using both Umbrello and Konqueror?

i was thinking about creating a virtual file system using UML::Package objects 
as directories and diagrams as files. konquerer wouldn't really have to see 
anything else. we could actually use the standard fs type stuff for that. the 
diagrams would be more equivilant to web pages. if you click on a class name, 
you can drill down to other related diagrams (like a sequence diagram from a 
use case or a state diagram from a class). who knows, maybe it would take you 
to a dynamically generated class specification page that shows all the 
documentation for the class.

as an alternative, we could offer a Cervisia like view for XMI files. if you 
change to that view, you could get some kind of KDoc-like web pages. the web 
pages, would of course, be entirely dynamically generated from the XMI. that 
would be pretty cool. this is something for the future. we're basically 
talking about autogenerating entire document sets for some architecture. 
sweet.

anyway, in either case, you wouldn't really need a tree view for model 
elements.

> Btw. I understand that diagrams are "documents" in a document management
> system, but what about things like "classes"? (Again, I am not very firm in
> UML, so please excuse my ignorance ;)

hehe. i don't think i know what i'm talking about half the time. just kicking 
around ideas. i think in this case, the only thing that konquerer needs is 
packages and diagrams. classes just aren't part of it.

andy