Re: [ related tools ] New release of AutoDia

[Lars Clausen <lrclause cs uiuc edu>]

On 08 Aug 2002, Lars Clausen wrote:
> On Thu, 8 Aug 2002, Aaron Trevena wrote:
>> 
>> All the fuss about sql and dia conversion reminds me... :)
>> 
>> I have just relased version 1.2 of AutoDia, a tool to generate Dia XML
>> (and anything else if you write a template) from Perl, Java, C++ and PHP
>> source code.
>> 
>> Its been redesigned for easy installation and the Java parser now uses
>> Java::Inline to get the metadata from the JVM. Lots of other updates
>> including improvements to teh c++ parser and perl parser and the
>> bundling of the PHP parser.
> 
> Ah, it works.  The autolayout seems to not be quite up to snuff, but it
> does have the connections right.  Nifty!  I may have to delve into the
> autolayout code and see if it can be fixed/rewritten.

After using this on a 128-class package, I have made the following
observations:

1) The various selection models are *very* powerful.  Fixing up this
   diagram without them would be a pain.
2) The current text handling is slow, but we knew that.
3) Crashes happen:)
4) A number of unnamed packages seem to appear
   (Inline::Java::Object=HASH(0x87d59a8) etc).  I guess the Java handler
   doesn't correctly get package names?
5) The new autosave feature is a Good Thing[tm] :)
6) The bug of unchanged properties changing in a group property change, and
   not being undoable, *must* be fixed[1].  It's not a pretty thing, though.
7) The user needs to know how many objects are connected (see much earlier
   UI discussion).
8) We need to do special handling of very small fonts, they don't seem to
   do well.

#6 and #8 are grave enough errors that they should be fixed for next release.

But overall, it's pleasant to deal with.

-Lars

[1] I tried to make all attributes and operations go away this way.  I
ended up with all classes named 'Error':)

-- 
Lars Clausen (http://shasta.cs.uiuc.edu/~lrclause)| Hårdgrim of Numenor
"I do not agree with a word that you say, but I   |----------------------------
will defend to the death your right to say it."   | Where are we going, and
    --Evelyn Beatrice Hall paraphrasing Voltaire  | what's with the handbasket?