Sequence diagram features to support

[Godsmith]

When starting to work on a list item, convert it to a sub-issue.

Priority order: already created sub-issues in order first, then list items in order.

Features to support

• delete participant
• delete message
• create note over
• create note over
• edit note over
• messages with two arrow heads (<-->)
• divider/separator (== my separator ==)
• group
• alt
• opt
• rnote/hnote
• links in notes
• delay (...)
• delay with text (... this is my text ...)
• Right-click on actor to create a signal to another actor last in the sequence (optimization)

Features that don't need interactivity support, but it must be verified that using them do not cause errors

• autonumber/autonumber /autonumber stop/autonumber resume
• colored notes: rnote over UPF #white
• colored text in notes: <color:blue>my blue text
• colored arrows: <-[#green]-
• title
• skinparam
• different arrow lengths (->, ------>)
• vertical boxes participant declaration (box mybox\nparticipant inside\nend box\nparticipant outside)
• <style>

[Godsmith]

@vareb

Spitballing a few ideas about the way of interacting with the sequence diagram below.

1. Ideas for how to create new participants

1.1. right-click background

When the user right-clicks the background anywhere, a context menu pops up with an option "Create participant here".

When the user clicks that option, look at the x coordinate of the right-click and compare it with the x coordinate of the existing participants. If the user clicked between participant A and B a new participant will be created there, etc.

We could either pop up a dialog asking you to input the name, or we could have the user edit the name by double-clicking the participant box in the diagram. I am leaning towards the latter, but it depends on our other choices; if we are using dialogs everywhere else we should do it here as well for example.

1.2. right-click existing participant

When you right click a participant box (also participant line? TBD), pop up a context menu with options "create new participant to the left" and "create new participant to the right".

This has the advantage of being similar to the activity diagram interface.

After the participant is created, the name can be entered in some way as discussed above.

2. Ideas for how to create new messages

2.1. right-click background

When the user right-clicks the background anywhere, a context menu pops up with an option "Create message".

The index of the message is determined analogously to how the participant index is determined above; by comparing the y coordinate of the right-click with the existing messages.

Next, the user has to choose the start and end of the message in some way.

2.1.1. Dialog

Pop up a dialog with two drop downs, each showing all the participants.

Would work, but would mean a lot of clicks.

2.1.2. Create a placeholder message

Create a message at the right index going from the first participant to the last participant, with a placeholder caption "New message 1" or similar.

To change the source and target of the message, the user would have to right-click the message to edit it, or however you end up editing a message.

The advantage of this solution is that it minimizes the number of code we have to write, since we likely want a way to edit existing messages anyway.

2.2. right-click participant line

Make it so that when you right-click (close to) a participant line, a context menu pops up with an option "Create message from ".

The index of the new message is determined the same way as above.

I can imagine a few options for choosing the target participant:

2.2.1. context menu

Make child options for each participant in the context menu. E.g., the entire context menu in a diagram with participants P1, P2, P3 will look like this when right-clicking on P1:

• Create message from P1
  • to P1
  • to P2
  • to P3

2.2.2. edit mode

Clicking "Create message from " makes you enter a kind of "edit mode" where you can click on another participant line. When you do, the message is created.

2.2.3. dialog

Instead of choosing a target in the context menu, we could pop up a dialog where you choose the target in a dropdown. There you could also edit message caption etc.

2.3. Click and drag from one participant line to another

Would be cool, especially if we could show a preview of the new diagram when we drag to each participant in turn. Not sure how practical. Also click and drag is miserable on laptops, so it can't be the sole way of creating messages anyway.