Bug 300531

Summary:	Umbrello has no mechanism to globally set persistent diagram style / font properties
Product:	[Applications] umbrello	Reporter:	Kip <kip>
Component:	general	Assignee:	Umbrello Development Group <umbrello-devel>
Status:	CONFIRMED ---
Severity:	wishlist	CC:	okellogg
Priority:	NOR
Version:	unspecified
Target Milestone:	---
Platform:	Compiled Sources
OS:	Linux
Latest Commit:		Version Fixed In:
Sentry Crash Report:

Description Kip 2012-05-23 22:29:34 UTC

Umbrello currently has no mechanism to globally set persistent diagram style / font properties. These properties affect adjoining lines, box edges, fonts, and so on in the case of UML or other diagrams.

If you have an existing diagram, the only way to change these characterists is to manually do so on each object which can take forever on a large project with many diagrams of many graphical objects.

You can change in the settings the default characteristics for new objects, but not existing ones globally. Even then, these settings are stored in the user's local Umbrello config and do not persist since they are not retained within the actual XMI file.

Reproducible: Always

Comment 1 Oliver Kellogg 2012-05-24 21:08:01 UTC

Just to make sure I understand:

In the Umbrello main window, if I go to
  Settings -> Configure Umbrello UML Modeller...
in the window that appears, on the left hand side I see the categories:
  General
  Font
  User Interface
  Class
  Code Importer
  Code Generation
  Code Viewer

I assume you are talking about the categories "Font" and "User Interface" ?
Are you saying that you want the user's selections in these categories to appear in the XMI file instead of $HOME/.kde4/share/config/umbrellorc ?

Comment 2 Kip 2012-05-25 00:06:12 UTC

Hey Oliver. I'm not sure how the problem applies to Settings -> Configure Umbrello UML Modeller, but I mainly noticed it with the UML diagrams. If you create or open a UML diagram with a bunch of objects on it, right click on empty part of the diagram and go Properties. Note the Style and Font tabs whose contents illustrate the problem because the settings don't apply to existing objects. I am not sure if those settings are stored in the XMI. It would make sense to be able to set stylized settings once for a set of diagrams and not have every object store these settings within the XMI, but be able to inherit from the global diagram settings and override only if the user chooses to. I think this is also more efficient.

Comment 3 Oliver Kellogg 2012-05-25 17:56:23 UTC

Okay, I looked into Umbrello current behavior & code and I agree.

(In reply to comment #1)
> [...]
> Are you saying that you want the user's selections in these categories to
> appear in the XMI file instead of $HOME/.kde4/share/config/umbrellorc ?

Correction: Not "instead of" but rather "also" (in the XMI file.)

Comment 4 Kip 2012-05-25 21:44:09 UTC

Thanks Oliver. This is a big problem for me because I am writing a book in a programmable typesetting language that uses diagrams exported from Umbrello. This is all done through the invocation of a makefile to generate the book by calling the appropriate programs. The problem is that the book's build procedure isn't really portable if the diagrams come out looking different on different machines which do not match the stylization of the book.