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When there is more than one connection between two nodes in the flow view (more forwards pointing to the same node, or a forward pointing to the input page), all connections are drawn over each other.
Connections should at least be routable manually (connection bendpoints should be manipulatable by the user).
Hi Rob,
The Flow Viewer is a work in progress that is being evolved into a flow modeler. We are working on a much improved layout and routing algorithm. Expect beta-2 to resolve this.
@support-michael wrote:
Hi Rob,
The Flow Viewer is a work in progress that is being evolved into a flow modeler. We are working on a much improved layout and routing algorithm. Expect beta-2 to resolve this.
I am glad to hear this, but please take my suggestions in the other thread (usability suggestions for flow view) into account as well, as functionality requirements (those are really necessary to provide fast intuitive and efficient flow editing capabilities).
The most important of them is the feature allowing the routing of connections (manipulate bendpoints) totally freely (add/remove bendpoints and make direct (not rectilinear) connections between bendpoints). Just make it at least as usable as Rational Rose Class Diagram association editing, and don’t leave any bugs in it (in Rose bugs remained).
I am glad to hear this, but please take my suggestions in the other thread (usability suggestions for flow view) into account as well, as functionality requirements (those are really necessary to provide fast intuitive and efficient flow editing capabilities).
I did send those along but am not surprised that they didn’t get more of a reaction as the team is juggling some major functionality and bug fixing for 2.8/3.8. I will do what I can to help these get into the tracker as TODO items.
The most important of them is the feature allowing the routing of connections (manipulate bendpoints) totally freely (add/remove bendpoints and make direct (not rectilinear) connections between bendpoints).
If you are talking about manipulating the connections between nodes, I honestly cannot see the *dire* importance of this. While it might be very nice to have, I would say prioritize manipulating connections (making 1 action point to a different forward) over being able to manipulate the connectors. I get needing to add a position adjuster on the center of each arm of the connector assuming we leave it rectangular however, as an algorithm isn’t always as accurate as we like.
and don’t leave any bugs in it (in Rose bugs remained).
While this goes directly against our development motto of “Crap software will make us rich!”, we’ll consider it.
The most important of them is the feature allowing the routing of connections (manipulate bendpoints) totally freely (add/remove bendpoints and make direct (not rectilinear) connections between bendpoints).
If you are talking about manipulating the connections between nodes, I honestly cannot see the *dire* importance of this. While it might be very nice to have, I would say prioritize manipulating connections (making 1 action point to a different forward) over being able to manipulate the connectors. I get needing to add a position adjuster on the center of each arm of the connector assuming we leave it rectangular however, as an algorithm isn’t always as accurate as we like.
Then you haven’t seen a page flow then with two jsp-s one of them acting as input, and one of them acting as action to the same dozen of struts actions. That means a 1-to-n-to-1 graph.
The current connection-router does not make too good a job of it. The only way you can make the connections not to go criss-crossing over each other is aligning the n actions vertically, and placing the two jsp-s very-very-very far on each sides… so that each action is visible at less than about 30 degrees angle to the horizontal from the jsp-s.
Actually I haven’t tried aligning the actions horizontally and putting the two jsps above and under, maybe it could take them being nearer to the actions, but I don’t think so, since the current connection-router algorithm decides from the three actions (left edge, right edge, s) depending on the angle and the more nearer you put the jsps to the line of actions, the wider the angle that the farthest action will be visible at.
So even at the current rectilinear router it would be very useful to be able to add / remove / move bendpoints (handles if you like) on connections.
But the really useful it becomes when you don’t force rectilinear routing, just direct lines between user placed bendpoints, so that you can trace your connections on arbitrary paths and turns and directions.
I would say prioritize manipulating connections (making 1 action point to a different forward) over being able to manipulate the connectors.
Probably you meant the other way round, making one forward to point to an other action, since I don’t really see how an action points to a forward. Of course it is also important to be able to change connection endpoints between nodes, but there already is a way to do that (editing the action forward either in the struts config or in the dialog).
But there is no way to arbitrarily lay out the connection paths. You can only move the actions and jsp-s around.
When you have a large and not even too complex pageflow, it becomes more and more important to be able to quickly visualize and understand the flow.
With connections crisscrossing over each other, and no hope to properly lay out the traces, it is very difficult to quickly encompass what you see and find what you want.
I know that you have to prioritize between features, but being able to arbitrarily route connections is also important.
That is also why I haven’t even blurted out my advanced suggestions for auto-layout, for instance with the gravity-antigravity layout algorithm, which helps you to automatically layout a graph of nodes when you have minimalized the crossovers in the connection paths… 🙂
Apropos visualizing… how about a feature for printing the entire flow? 🙂
and don’t leave any bugs in it (in Rose bugs remained).
While this goes directly against our development motto of “Crap software will make us rich!”, we’ll consider it.
🙂 That’s enough for me 🙂
Although there are a couple more bugs which I bumped into, like sometimes Eclipse not being able to fill up the package explorer in MyEclipse perspective, and nothing helps, only restarting Eclipse, when in about 50% it helps… There are some exceptions dumped in the log
Unfortunately I haven’t been able to reliably reproduce it, that’s why you don’t yet have a bugreport about it.
Regards,
Robert
Rob,
Then you haven’t seen a page flow then with two jsp-s one of them acting as input, and one of them acting as action to the same dozen of struts actions. That means a 1-to-n-to-1 graph.
You are correct.
That is also why I haven’t even blurted out my advanced suggestions for auto-layout
Ha, I know the feeling. We appreciate the self constraint right now. Maybe when we get some down time you can send us a long detailed email and give Michael/Scott an annurism.
Apropos visualizing… how about a feature for printing the entire flow? 🙂
Funny, when I was reading your detailed post the first thing that popped in my head is “Well if you are spending so much time to lay this thing out, then I suppose you need to print it for documentation or presentations”. But for the sake of my job, I won’t mention this just yet to the team 🙂
Eclipse not being able to fill up the package explorer in MyEclipse perspective
Hmm… I haven’t seen that and it sounds like a real P.I.A… is your project inordinately large? When you say “fill up” you mean you’ll see something like the first half of your packages under your /src dir and then not see the rest of them? Very odd…
Unfortunately I haven’t been able to reliably reproduce it, that’s why you don’t yet have a bugreport about it.
I know the team and I really appreciate that, your reports are always extremely detailed and articulated. Makes it very easy for us to kick things around with you and attack the problem.
Rob,
So I sent your request in with some comments to the team, and instead of a discussion, this is what I got back:
Also the printing part is looking on the up-and-up too… just incase you were about to ask that 😀
Hi Riyad,
Eclipse not being able to fill up the package explorer in MyEclipse perspective
Hmm… I haven’t seen that and it sounds like a real P.I.A… is your project inordinately large? When you say “fill up” you mean you’ll see something like the first half of your packages under your /src dir and then not see the rest of them? Very odd…
The funny thing is that it was a simple Web project to look at the new flow view capabilities, so it was only a struts-config, the project base files (jar files, directory structure, only what MyEclipse puts in a new project), and maybe one or two actions and forms, what MyEclipse generated when I started to use the add this or that function in the outline view just to get the feel of it. Also this was the only project ever inserted or imported into that Eclipse workspace.
And it was not loading the stuff halfway. I had the project node in the Package Explorer, with a plus node in front of it, indicating that the node is closed. When I tried to open it, the plus node vanished, and no children nodes appeared at all in Package explorer. This after startup.
Also Eclipse was telling it was unable to load the last focused file (and actually when I tried to change editors, it was not able to load those either, so probably none of them could be loaded). Nothing changed this.
After restart, everything came up without a problem.
This happened more than once. There were some exceptions in the log too originating from some MyEclipse related class initialize methods as far as I remember, but I may be wrong in this. If I have time in the weekend, I will try to see what exactly is the triggering factor, currently I have a hunch that maybe it depends on what the last file editor was, which would probably mean some out-of-order initialization is taking place somewhere…
Regards,
Robert
@support-rkalla wrote:
Rob,
So I sent your request in with some comments to the team, and instead of a discussion, this is what I got back:
Also the printing part is looking on the up-and-up too… just incase you were about to ask that 😀
That’s exactly what is useful. Thank you very much, this really is much more usable than the auto-laid out connections in Beta 1.
I am more and more eager to see Beta 2 🙂 Any chance of a prerelease? :-)))))))
Btw. it would also be useful if the color (and maybe the style (dashed, dotted, continous, etc) and thickness) of the connections of different type could be configurable in the flow view preferences, it makes it easier to differentiate in a glance between
– input page connections,
– local forwards,
– local redirecting forwards,
– forwarding actions and
– redirecting forwarding actions.Regards,
Robert
If I have time in the weekend, I will try to see what exactly is the triggering factor, currently I have a hunch that maybe it depends on what the last file editor was, which would probably mean some out-of-order initialization is taking place somewhere…
This is odd, we appreciate you taking the time to run it down with us, as I don’t think our unit tests will catch something like this 😉
Any chance of a prerelease? :-)))))))
Hahh, you want a prerelease of our beta release? Man… maybe we should just auto-post nightly builds to the download section 😀
Btw. it would also be useful if the color (and maybe the style (dashed, dotted, continous, etc) and thickness) of the connections of different type could be configurable in the flow view preferences, it makes it easier to differentiate in a glance between
Good suggestions I’ll send those on.
Any chance of a prerelease? :-)))))))
Hahh, you want a prerelease of our beta release? Man… maybe we should just auto-post nightly builds to the download section 😀
Now that’s a good idea 🙂
But seriously… I guess you guys get a lot of complaint in the Eclipse-plugins site just because of the too slow releases. I know it is also partly because of having to support two versions of the platform, and now that may change now. But still, if the people out there would see with their own eyes that you are working on those features you promised, it may get rid of some of those complaints.
Of course you should put a notice there that this is (pre-)alpha code, so no quality guarantee, and only polite and useful bug reports please, and into a separate grouping of topics, but if specific features could be in merged one by one (or at least more frequently), and frequent builds from compilable merges (with automatic unit tests run of course, and only if they all pass) could be accessed by the public, I guess it would take away much of the improper critique you receive.
And you would get much-much-more testing for free :-).
Also if these frequent builds could be manually installable in smaller chunks (plugins or sets of related plugins), but not only in all or nothing way, it would also help a lot, and that would also enable more frequent test builds of smaller parts.
Of course there need to be no installer for these builds, only a manual install with sufficient instructions would be enough. Those who are daring enough to try these versions do not need the manual installer anyway, since probably they have several separate versions of MyEclipse anyway, something which the current installer cannot on its own handle, I think (maybe I am wrong, but I don’t know what would happen for example with the registry and the start menu directory if I installed two versions of MyEclipse, and then removed the one installed first).
From that, it comes to my mind, that the subscription data for the MyEclipse plugin is stored in the workspace and not in the MyEclipse directory. Is it possible to change that somehow, and put that info under the MyEclipse installation directory? Now, whenever I make a new workspace, for the same Eclipse installation, I have to set the subscription data for it again.
Regards,
Robert
From that, it comes to my mind, that the subscription data for the MyEclipse plugin is stored in the workspace and not in the MyEclipse directory. Is it possible to change that somehow, and put that info under the MyEclipse installation directory? Now, whenever I make a new workspace, for the same Eclipse installation, I have to set the subscription data for it again.
Of course, you have to reset every other preference setting also. 😉 The easiest way to do this is to simply export all the preferences from your existing workspace and import them into your new one by using Windows > Prefereces > Export… at the bottom of the form.
