384 TOOLS FOR DSM
Automatic Property Dialog, Custom Layouts The de?¬?nitions of the properties
associated with a concept should be suf?¬?cient to enable automatic creation of
proper forms or property dialogs for editing instances of this concept.Atrue form with
the normal data entry widgets appropriate for each property??™s data type is the ideal
format for editing property values.
Simple table-like property sheets can only handle short, simple values well, and are
best saved for a quick read-only display of the current element??™s values. Where such
sheets are constantly visible, their size and font size will always be a compromise
between the usability of the sheet and the space left for modeling. Tiny fonts and short
space for values may be acceptable for read-only display, but not for editing values. As
user feedback is strongly in favor of proper forms with standard data entry widgets, the
property sheets are presumably just a quick, cheap solution for the initial version of a
DSM environment. The true costs of this saving are however passed on to the
modelers, or then to the metamodelers who have to program a proper form by hand.
In-place editing of property values in symbols is an area that requires more
investigation.DSMlanguages strive to avoid representing everything as simple text: if
the entirety of a model is seen as text values in its diagrams, there seems little bene?¬?t to
using a graphical representation.
Pages:
715
716
717
718
719
720
721
722
723
724
725
726
727
728
729
730
731
732
733
734
735
736
737
738
739