[Uml-devel] Re: Thoughts on Umbrello 1.3

[Jonathan Riddell]

On Sat, Jun 05, 2004 at 09:15:25PM +0200, Oliver Kellogg wrote:

Thanks for this handy summary Oliver.

Well done on packages.

> Associations are still a wound spot. I don't see when I will have the time
> to implement the list view representation that you mention above.
> The same goes for states and activities, which should be given a
> representation in the model. Help is much appreciated.

The association code will be clean and tidy one day (probably when X
configuration is easy too).

> > When you create an item on the canvas the dialogue should give you the
> > option of using an existing class/interface/whatever and list the packages
> > it could go in.
> 
> I'm not quite sure I understand. Do you mean the popup should list
> the available classifiers when creating attributes or operations?

It should offer the option of either creating a new one or choosing an
existing one.  I suspect the idea of dragging from the list view isn't
always immediatly obvious.  It's not a major issue though.

> > [...] but it may be best to tidy up the code generators we do have.
> > For example why does the C++ code generator not add a variable
> > for a unidirectional association?
> >
> > The refactoring agent probably needs some work to make it more
> > user friendly.
> >
> > Adding What's This help would be good.
> 
> How about making a bugs.kde.org entries for these?

Yep.

> > I like the icons we have in the toolbar, they're clean, simple and
> useable.
> > The ones with English text in them should be changed though. Icons for
> > diagrams can't be too hard (significant widget for that diagram type,
> > make them coloured, add a border to indicate canvas).
> 
> Well, Zoltan B has done some work on the icons - does that cover your
> ideas?

New icons are groovy.  KDE lacks the 22x22 folder and home icons
though, it would be nice if I found the time to make those up.

> > If we could get SVG export of course that would be excellent.
> 
> Yeah. Still in the realm of dreams unfortunately :)

It seems not so, Achim has found an easy way to do it.  

This is related to have a canvas with anti-aliasing, which we still
don't, but the new one in kdenonbeta pointed out recently looks
promising if it gets done.

> > Standards compliance with XMI is happening now which is great.
> 
> I hope to get the changes necessary for making the save format
> of stereotypes and templates conform to the XMI standard into
> umbrello in time for the 1.3 release. Of course there is still work left,
> for example supporting multiplicities and tagged values in an XMI
> standard conforming way, but that's not doable in the 1.3 timeframe.

I'm very impressed that you've managed to make your way through the
XMI standard, i never could.

> > Eventually we may need to look at UML 2 but probably not for this release.
> >
> > Those are the issues on my mind today but there's plenty of other entries
> > marked 'Umbrello' in bugs.kde.org and Seb reported that valgrind gave
> > 30,000 errors when Umbrello was run over it so if anyone is looking for
> > a way to begin a KDE programming career this is your opportunity!
> 
> I'm totally with you here. We are actually in desperate need of more help.
> For one, I myself am far from being able to do the task justice in the
> little
> spare time that I have. -- Speaking of spare time, I'm on vacation
> throughout the coming week.

Ooh, holiday, good Umbrello hacking time :)

Jonathan