Randall Gellens provided some feedback and feature requests. I'm putting these, and my responses (starting with '*') up here so they are not lost and can be picked up the next time someone has time to make changes on callplot.
On Apr 27, 2011, at 16:08 , Randall Gellens wrote:
Hey there,
I want to say how cool this is! I often need to create call flow illustrations, and doing everything by hand is time-consuming, especially when something needs to change. Callplot is extremely helpful, and I'm very grateful to you for writing it and for the OmniGraffle support. Thank you!
To avoid manually editing the OmniGraffle document each time it's generated, I'm wondering if you have any tips on ways to automate a few things, either through callplot or a post-processing script of some kind (e.g., BBEdit text factory, sed, Applescript):
- Boxes around 'note' items
I often need to show processing steps in a box. The 'note' item is very close but I need to modify the item to have a box, which I can do manually by ungrouping and then changing the stroke color to black.
*If you don't mind a bit of digging and editing code, this would probably amount to a one line code change. The attributes applied to the graphical elements, such as the note box, are in the code where the notes are processed and you could change the line color there.
- Bidirectional arrows
Often I need to show a secondary exchange as a line with an arrow on each end. Is there a way to do this? The README says "When using -graffle, x->x can be used to show a looped back message" but I'm not sure what this means or how it differs from "x->y" in general.
* The loopback will draw a circular line that comes back to the same line it started from. This is intended to show when actors send messages back to themselves.
There is not a way to generate a line with arrows on each end. You can do a dotted line with no arrows, which may help. that is "x..y/label"
- Dotted lines for arrows and note boxes
There is a convention in some groups that dotted lines indicate optional messages or steps, so I'd like a way to make some arrowed lines use a dotted line. If I could get a box around a 'note' item, I'd like a way to make that box be dotted rather than solid.
* technically possible, but it would require some development to add the options. Making the lines dotted is fairly easy.
- 'startLine' option
The 'startLine' option doesn't seem to have any effect. My lines start with '1' no matter what I set 'startLine' to.
* I have a recollection of seeing issues with this option for graffle output. It was not one that anyone here was using. I'm putting your email and my response up on sourceforge so that this is not lost if I, or someone else, has time to make changes and fix issues.
Let me reiterate how thrilled I am with this tool. I'll be very grateful for any suggestions you may have as to how to automate these few aspects.
If you would like to refer to this comment somewhere else in this project, copy and paste the following link:
Randall Gellens provided some feedback and feature requests. I'm putting these, and my responses (starting with '*') up here so they are not lost and can be picked up the next time someone has time to make changes on callplot.
On Apr 27, 2011, at 16:08 , Randall Gellens wrote:
Hey there,
I want to say how cool this is! I often need to create call flow illustrations, and doing everything by hand is time-consuming, especially when something needs to change. Callplot is extremely helpful, and I'm very grateful to you for writing it and for the OmniGraffle support. Thank you!
To avoid manually editing the OmniGraffle document each time it's generated, I'm wondering if you have any tips on ways to automate a few things, either through callplot or a post-processing script of some kind (e.g., BBEdit text factory, sed, Applescript):
- Boxes around 'note' items
I often need to show processing steps in a box. The 'note' item is very close but I need to modify the item to have a box, which I can do manually by ungrouping and then changing the stroke color to black.
*If you don't mind a bit of digging and editing code, this would probably amount to a one line code change. The attributes applied to the graphical elements, such as the note box, are in the code where the notes are processed and you could change the line color there.
- Bidirectional arrows
Often I need to show a secondary exchange as a line with an arrow on each end. Is there a way to do this? The README says "When using -graffle, x->x can be used to show a looped back message" but I'm not sure what this means or how it differs from "x->y" in general.
* The loopback will draw a circular line that comes back to the same line it started from. This is intended to show when actors send messages back to themselves.
There is not a way to generate a line with arrows on each end. You can do a dotted line with no arrows, which may help. that is "x..y/label"
- Dotted lines for arrows and note boxes
There is a convention in some groups that dotted lines indicate optional messages or steps, so I'd like a way to make some arrowed lines use a dotted line. If I could get a box around a 'note' item, I'd like a way to make that box be dotted rather than solid.
* technically possible, but it would require some development to add the options. Making the lines dotted is fairly easy.
- 'startLine' option
The 'startLine' option doesn't seem to have any effect. My lines start with '1' no matter what I set 'startLine' to.
* I have a recollection of seeing issues with this option for graffle output. It was not one that anyone here was using. I'm putting your email and my response up on sourceforge so that this is not lost if I, or someone else, has time to make changes and fix issues.
Let me reiterate how thrilled I am with this tool. I'll be very grateful for any suggestions you may have as to how to automate these few aspects.