Re: How many use the diagram tree?

[Alan Horkan <horkana maths tcd ie>]

On Sun, 10 Aug 2003, James K. Lowden wrote:

> Date: Sun, 10 Aug 2003 06:12:01 -0400
> From: James K. Lowden <jklowden schemamania org>
> Reply-To: dia-list gnome org
> To: dia-list gnome org
> Subject: Re: How many use the diagram tree?
>
> On Fri, 8 Aug 2003 17:25:29 -0400, <ashalper cox net> wrote:
> > > > I will desperately need UML views (The Unified Modeling Language
> > > > User Guide, p. 468) in the near future.  The diagram is already too
> > > > complex to view in its entirety (it is derived from a horrifying
> > > > government legacy system).
> >
> > My interpretation of it is one or more diagrams of the same set of
> > objects, each diagram including some subset and only a subset of the
> > original set, but otherwise independent of each other.  I haven't used
> > Rational or any other commercial UML tool, so I don't know how it's
> > implemented there, but ERwin has something similar and I use it quite a
> > bit to make less cluttered subschema diagrams of the larger schema.
>
> A simple ER diagram has a dozen tables and is no problem to navigate.  A
> complex one has >100 tables and presents many, um, presentation problems.

There are definately serious issues when you take any feature of Dia and
try and scale it upwards to a huge level, keeping things simple and
leaving room for growth will need to be kept in mind.

> Two very useful features: named subsets, and diagram view settings.

> "Tabbed diagrams" would seem to me to be the natural way to present named
> subsets to the UI, FWIW.

If by Tabbed Diagrams you mean representing multiple pages in single
workbook then that sounds reasonable and consistant with other diagramming
software.  I would really hate to see someone trying to reinvent the
window manager and turn Dia in to a tabbed interface, which is quite
differnt from the idea of a workbook with multiple pages/sheets which we
will eventually want to support anyway for compatibility reasons.

> As long as I'm just naming random features, let me add one that sounds a
> little bizarre but turns out to be quite handy.  Right-click on a line,
> and the menu says "go to parent" and "go to child" (among others things).
> Pick one, and -- zip! -- there you are.

When suggesting features it always helps if you can identify a program
that already succesfully implements the behaviour (I am guessing ERwin
agian).
In case anyone else is also intrigued by ERwin
http://www3.ca.com/Solutions/Product.asp?ID=260
I dont particularly want to register just to try it out for a few weeks
but as you already seem to be using it extensively screenshots and
descriptions of things about it you like would be helpful.

This might be an interesting (potentially better) way of looking at the
behaviours that are currently dealt with in the Selection menu, we might
be able to seperate out the concept of going to and actually selecting
these objects.

Sincerely

Alan Horkan
http://advogato.org/person/AlanHorkan/