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Gaphor UI design |
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Gaphor has quite a complex UI design. This is basically due to the fact that |
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Gaphor is very flexible and extensible. |
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Some advantages of the BonoboUI library are used to ease UI maintenance. |
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Gaphor uses (for example) BonoboUIEngine to ease creation of menu items. |
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For a start two windows will be created: a main window and a diagram edit |
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window. The main window will have the name 'gaphor' and the diagram |
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windows will have names like 'gaphor.diagram1'. where the number is increasing |
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every time a new diagram window is created. |
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Now we can distinguish 4 different places where menus appear: |
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1. In the main menu. As argument the main window is provided. |
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2. Popup in the main menu. Provided are the MainWindow and the model element |
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under the cursor (from the UML package). |
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3. The menubar in the diagram window. (with the DiagramWindow object as arg.) |
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4. Popup in the diagram view. (DiagramWindow object and CanvasItem/DiagramItem |
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are provided (or a list of canvas items)). |
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Menu items and their accompanied actions should tell Gaphor where they should |
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be displayed. |
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We'll name the contexts: |
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context: arguments: |
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1. main.menu window (gaphor.ui.MainWindow) |
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2. main.popup window (gaphor.ui.MainWindow), |
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element (gaphor.UML.Element) |
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3. diagram.menu window (gaphor.ui.DiagramWindow) |
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4. diagram.popup window (gaphor.ui.DiagramWindow), |
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item (gaphor.diagram.DiagramItem, focused item), |
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item_list (list of selected DiagramItems) |
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etc. |
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A command should tell in it's info which context should be provided. |
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Inside Bonobo |
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~~~~~~~~~~~~~ |
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From a Bonobo point of view, the smallest thing in Gaphor will be the command. |
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A command is a piece of code that is executed. The command has some meta-info. |
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Things like a name, a label, a place in the menu structure etc. |
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Basically everything that is executed from a menu is implemented as a Command, |
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even the File->New operation. |
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For many items (such as File->New) there is a pre-defined place in the menu |
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structure. These menu items are defined in the gaphor-ui.xml file. Commands |
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are added dynamically. Commands should register themselves using a unique |
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name and a label or something. |
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Something about Bonobo's structure |
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~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ |
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It's all about the BonoboWindow. The BonoboWindow has features for advanced |
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menu handling and some other things. |
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The menu's are created using a XML file. the XML file contains 4 sections: |
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1. command, abstraction of menu items, make for easy adjustments |
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2. menu, the menu structure containing submenu's, menuitem's and placeholder's |
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3. popup menu, see 2 |
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4. toolbar |
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The commands will be registered in a CommandRegistry. The command registry is |
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capable of creating the xml that is needed for commands, as well as the |
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Command instances that will be used to execute the actual commands. |
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