Home » Modeling » Graphiti » Connections
| Connections [message #717277] |
Fri, 19 August 2011 19:46  |
 Hernan Gonzalez
Messages: 188
Registered: October 2010
Location: Buenos Aires, Argentina |
Senior Member |
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Looking at the Connection alternatives at Graphiti, it appear that the only alternatives are the "FreeFormConnection" and the "ManhattanConnection" (this pictogram diagram includes some others, but they seem not existant).
The Manhattan type seems half baked, it that it is not very clever guessing orientations and in that it doest allow any manual retouching (other issues: it doesnt know to avoid objects, but this was to be expected, and I would live with that if I could manually do some corrections; and the angles are curved); for example
On the other side, the FreeFormConnection seems a little too sophisticated and particular (perhaps this comes for having been implemented with a particular use case in mind). In a typical graphical editor one does not frequently need/want connections with Bezier points, and would normally prefer something simpler, something like (say) the connections in the ecore diagram editor. Is there some way (perhaps creating another connection type?) to disable the "bezier points", and use plain intermediate connection points (rectilinear)?
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| Re: Connections [message #718435 is a reply to message #717277] |
Wed, 24 August 2011 10:30  |
Michael Wenz
Messages: 1931
Registered: July 2009
Location: Walldorf, Germany |
Senior Member |
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Currently Graphiti only supports the mentioned connection types. A Bezier
connection type was requested at one time, but at least so far we do not
know of any further requests in that area.
Feel free to create enhancement Bugzillas in case you feel you need
something additionally.
Michael
"Hernan" <forums-noreply@eclipse.org> wrote in message
news:j2mdtj$il5$1@news.eclipse.org...
> Looking at the Connection alternatives at Graphiti, it appear that the
> only alternatives are the "FreeFormConnection" and the
> "ManhattanConnection" (this pictogram
> http://www.eclipse.org/graphiti/images/pictograms.pdf includes some
> others, but they seem not existant).
> The Manhattan type seems half baked, it that it is not very clever
> guessing orientations and in that it doest allow any manual retouching
> (other issues: it doesnt know to avoid objects, but this was to be
> expected, and I would live with that if I could manually do some
> corrections; and the angles are curved); for
> http://img832.imageshack.us/img832/8403/manhattan.png
>
> On the other side, the FreeFormConnection seems a little too sophisticated
> and particular (perhaps this comes for having been implemented with a
> particular use case in mind). In a typical graphical editor one does not
> frequently need/want connections with Bezier points, and would normally
> prefer something simpler, something like (say) the connections in the
> ecore diagram editor. Is there some way (perhaps creating another
> connection type?) to disable the "bezier points", and use plain
> intermediate connection points (rectilinear)?
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| Re: Connections [message #719288 is a reply to message #719244] |
Fri, 26 August 2011 15:44 |
Hernan Gonzalez
Messages: 188
Registered: October 2010
Location: Buenos Aires, Argentina |
Senior Member |
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Michael Wenz wrote on Fri, 26 August 2011 10:56
Currently, there's no hook to add further connection types to Graphiti.
Nevertheless it could be possible to create a metamodel extension to define
the needed metamodel objects (subclasses of Connection), but the harder part
would be to provide the rendering and interaction handling. Ther you will
have to reference lots of internal classes and methods.
Thanks. Yes, that's also my impression, after peeking inside sources. Currently Graphiti has the virtue of giving a quick path to building a Graphical Editor with EMF, hiding the complexities of GEF (which is great) - but it also seems to have very little extension-customization-hooks capabilities.
I found interesting your suggestion of extending the pictorial metamodel, I had not thought of that, and rather assumed that the classes were set on stone (I was missing other Anchor classes). However, I guess that the internal code is quite coupled with the standard metamodel, and some logic will break if classes are added to it.
Guess I'm going to use Graphiti more as boilerplate code than as a framework? Mmmm
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| Re: Connections [message #719886 is a reply to message #719288] |
Mon, 29 August 2011 10:25 |
Michael Wenz
Messages: 1931
Registered: July 2009
Location: Walldorf, Germany |
Senior Member |
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Well, it's a way you could do it, I'm not saying this is a nice and easy
way...
Regarding enhancement options: we are still on our way from a
company-standards-driven framework to a really entensible one. For the
connections there was simply not yet the need for any enhancements. So, the
best solution for this would be to open an enhancement bug to add further
connection types (or even open up for custom types), so that all this effort
flows back to Graphiti and all its users.
Michael
"Hernan" schrieb im Newsbeitrag news:j38ec0$rhv$1@news.eclipse.org...
Michael Wenz wrote on Fri, 26 August 2011 10:56
> Currently, there's no hook to add further connection types to Graphiti.
> Nevertheless it could be possible to create a metamodel extension to
> define the needed metamodel objects (subclasses of Connection), but the
> harder part would be to provide the rendering and interaction handling.
> Ther you will have to reference lots of internal classes and methods.
Thanks. Yes, that's also my impression, after peeking inside sources.
Currently Graphiti has the virtue of giving a quick path to building a
Graphical Editor with EMF, hiding the complexities of GEF (which is great) -
but it also seems to have very little extension-customization-hooks
capabilities.
I found interesting your suggestion of extending the pictorial metamodel, I
had not thought of that, and rather assumed that the classes were set on
stone (I was missing other Anchor classes). However, I guess that the
internal code is quite coupled with the standard metamodel, and some logic
will break if classes are added to it.
Guess I'm going to use Graphiti more as boilerplate code than as a
framework? Mmmm
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