Alexander Limi wrote:
> Hello from the Plone community!
> I recently stumbled over Gaphor while looking for an alternative to the
> bloated and slow Java-based editors, and must say that I was pleasantly
> surprised to find one that is faster and even written in Python! :)

I've also been watching Gaphor with great interest, I hope to use it
someday with ArchGenXML for Plone development for the same reasons as
Alexander. It was hard to force myself to install a Java VM for a UML
editor, and a free-as-in-beer one at that. Slow!

One feature I'd be interested in seeing Gaphor offer is a preference
option to make the XMI output diff-friendly, for use in version control
systems.

XMI files are often large, but the diffs per model change usually aren't,
if you take some care to run the generated XMI through a tidy stage.

This would involve configurable constraints above and beyond XML-spec
formatting rules (e.g. indents, newlines after tags, ordering sibling
nodes and attributes according to lexical or preserved order, etc.)

If that first idea can be implemented, another one would be to have a
no-formatting-tags filter for the XMI. When enabled, Gaphor would save
two files at every save command. I'd prefer to check two XMI model files
into a subversion repository, one master copy with all formatting
information, and one stripped to only tags that affect (ArchGenXML) code
generation. Perhaps a tag list for the filter could be set in the
preferences. Both output files would have the diff-friendly formatting
applied.

I think diffable, possibly filtered XMI would be a highly unique feature
among UML editors, one that would attract the Gaphor demographic of
FOSS-python-subversion/cvs developers.

Thanks for Gaphor!



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