Since that represents half of the
possible role line angles, rotating the actual text content tends to be a poor idea.With
Manhattan (i.e., perpendicular) routing the situation is even worse: half of all role
lines are at the absolute worst angle, vertical.
If the contents of text elements are to be displayed horizontally, there is the
question of how their position and size react to changes in the role line angle. Most
people??™s initial attempt will have the text offset above a horizontal line, but this leads
to problems when the line is rotated to be vertical. If the text box is also rotated, it will
now have many rows each of one character. If the text is not rotated, a long text
stretching out perpendicular to a vertical role line will lead quickly to confusion, with
texts crossing several such role lines. Even with shorter texts, having the text offset
above a horizontal line will mean that when rotated to point upward, the text will be
offset to the left of the line.
Some of these problems can be seen in Fig. 14.2, which shows two different
symbols for a role at the top, and then effects in a model below. The tool here is using
what we have found to be the best approach to rotating text elements in role symbols:
do not rotate the content or boundary of the text, but allow its midpoint to rotate with
376 TOOLS FOR DSM
the role line.
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