Re: How many use the diagram tree?

[Lars Clausen <lrclause cs uiuc edu>]

On 8 Aug 2003, ashalper@cox.net wrote:
>
>>
>> From: Lars Clausen <lrclause@cs.uiuc.edu>
>> Date: 2003/08/08 Fri PM 01:11:20 EDT
>> To: dia-list@gnome.org
>> Subject: Re: How many use the diagram tree?
>>
>> On 8 Aug 2003, ashalper@cox.net wrote:
>>>> While preparing to integrate the parenting code with the diagram tree
>>>> (making it an actually tree), I ran across a rather obvious bug in
>>>> using the diagram tree with groups and undo.  Curious that nobody has
>>>> mentioned this bug, I would like to hear how many actually use the
>>>> diagram tree in their work?  And if the diagram tree became more
>>>> tree-like (i.e. with groups and parents forming extra branches), would
>>>> more people use it?
>>>
>>> I use it often on a huge UML diagram (~334 classes), mainly to navigate
>>> to the class I need to work on.  Scrolling at anything smaller than
>>> about 30% magnification takes too long.
>>
>> Ok, that's good to know.  Would it help or hinder you if the groups
>> became tree-nodes with their contents as children?
>
> At this point I don't use groups, I think mainly due to my own ignorance
> (I just haven't thought of anything I could use them for yet).  If I did
> use them, I don't think it would hinder me if they became tree-nodes.
>
> I do find having all the object types (classes, associations,
> generalizations, etc.) displayed in the same column rather annoying.  I
> have thought about fancy ways to improve this, but I can never get past
> the acyclic tree widget vs. cyclic diagram relationships problem.  At
> least for the UML sheet, I guess I wouldn't complain if the object types
> were grouped under tree-nodes.
>
> 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).

I'm afraid I don't have that book.  Can you give some idea of what it is,
and how you could conceive of it being used in Dia?

>> If this is with 0.91, then most likely text rendering is to blame.
>> Especially when using AA, it has taken a performance hit,  I think there
>> are some caching opportunities we're missing so far.
>
> I'm building from CVS on Debian unstable.  One thing I've noticed that
> ERwin does is that it gives up on rendering text below a certain
> magnification threshold because the text would not be legible anyway.  I
> realize this may not be practical for Dia, but it's an idea.

That could be useful.

> What is "AA"?

Anti-aliasing.

-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?