Bug 96897

Summary: Show just the main attributes and methods in UML class diagrams
Product: [Applications] umbrello Reporter: Pietro Mele <pietromele>
Component: generalAssignee: Umbrello Development Group <umbrello-devel>
Status: CONFIRMED ---    
Severity: wishlist    
Priority: LO    
Version: unspecified   
Target Milestone: ---   
Platform: unspecified   
OS: Linux   
Latest Commit: Version Fixed In:

Description Pietro Mele 2005-01-13 10:58:12 UTC 
Version:            (using KDE KDE 3.3.0)
Installed from:    00
OS:                Linux

Methods/attributes hiding...

A suggestion about methods and attributes:

a class can have many of them, and they don't have all the same
importance. It should be possible to make just some of them visible.

It is useful for the following reasons:

- You can import a cass from the source code, but you may want to 
  view just part of it (e.g. the most important part).

- You can use the same class in different diagrams, and in 
  each diagram you may want to show different details.

- Other programs already do it (e.g. Poseidon UML).

It should not be a hard task: just add a flag to each attribute/method
for each class representation.
Comment 1 Jonathan Riddell 2005-01-27 05:47:45 UTC 
You can already decide only to show public but not private attributes and opertations
Comment 2 Alan Ezust 2005-04-23 19:01:41 UTC 
changing the accessibility of the members public/private does not help me for some cases. It would be nice to be able to, for example, hide all the getters/setters (since they're pretty much common to lots of classes) and show only the interesting operations.

I know it would be tricky to have the show/hide flag apply differently to different diagrams, and I don't need that, but I really could use a show/hide flag.
Comment 3 Pietro Mele 2005-04-26 10:23:43 UTC 
>> You can already decide only to show public but not private attributes 
>> and opertations 

Ok, but it often happens that what you want to show are the most relevant public AND private members, and hide the others. 

>> I know it would be tricky to have the show/hide flag apply differently to 
>> different diagrams, ...

I do not know how the program is engineered, but it should not be such a hard task. When something is shown in a diagram (e.g. a class), it should have an associated object that contains its position, size, etc. There should be such an object for every representation of that "thing" (e.g. the class) in the UML diagrams. 
Now, what I think should be done, is to add a bit for each member to this data structure. If it's 1, show the member, otherwise hide it...

This would allow to draw diagrams that are much more synthetic and to the point, i.e. they could focus on what the diagrams' author was thinking about.

Pietro