Re: direct text input for UML-message

[Lars Clausen <lrclause cs uiuc edu>]

On Mon, 10 Feb 2003, Hans Busch wrote:
> I tried dia for designing sequence diagrams. It produces nice
> charts! Unfortunately the input mechanisms via popup menus is slow. 
> So I had a look at the code and although it's C and not C++ I was
> surprised to find such well structured code that it took only 
> some hours to understand amd improve UML-message (congratulations
> to the designers). 

Thank you.  We've been trying to keep Alex' original clean design as
straight as possible.

> Beside direct text input I also added an object menu, but I am not 
> satisfied with the result which may be caused by my poor understanding 
> of the menu mechanism. For UML-message a set of radio buttons would be
> ideal. Is there a simple way to define them? 

There's currently support for 'toggle' style menus, though I don't think
any examples of its use.  The code is in app/disp_callbacks.c.  Some of the
FS objects have a radio-like behaviour, but it's not very complete.  If you
can make a good (non-hacky:) radio behaviour, we'll be happy to include it
in the next version (0.92).

> Is there a reason, why the middle button doesn't select the object? 
> This would speed up usage by eliminating a left mouse click.

Yes, there is.  The position of the mouse when clicking the middle button
may be used by the menus.  For instance, when adding points to
polyline/bezier, the new point is added at the click point.

I have plans for sometime later to add more UML-specific stuff to the
menus.  For instance, each class could have a item 'Inherit From', where if
you middle-click on another object and select 'Inherit From', inheritance
is automatically defined between the two (but if there's no object at the
click point, you get to drag an inheritance line).

> For those interested in the changes please find them below. They are
> relative to dia-0.90.

Thanks!  I won't add it now, as we're in the middle of a prerelease and
don't want new features to add possible bugs.  But once 0.91 is officially
out we can add it.

I have some (more) long-term plans for UML that you might be able to look
into.  Ideally, all fields in objects should be editable in place.  One of
the main things for 0.92 will be a separate text entry mode (ala changing
the name of files in file managers).  With that in place, clicking on a
field in a UML class should put you into edit mode for that field, and TAB
should send you to the next field.  Operation/attribute fields would need
to be parsed, somehow (that's an entirely different bucket of worms, too).

It's a very good idea to make development agains the CVS version.  This
patch fails to apply on CVS.  If you're hesitant about using CVS, you can
pick up one of the prereleases recently announced on the list.

-Lars

-- 
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?