Dear Mr. Pages,
firstly something I wanted to tell you many years ago (back when bouml was still FOSS) - your UML modeller is simply the best. And I've tried quite a few, both free (ArgoUML, Umbrello, ...) and commercial (mainly Rational Rose). Before I found bouml, I ended up using pen and paper, simply because no tool suited my needs. So, thanks for bouml! It's a pity that it isn't more wide-spread, in my opinion it deserves more recognition.
With that in mind, I still have some ideas to make a great tool even better:
- Instead of displaying a grid in the diagrams, I would find it more helpful to (a) only display the "crossings" of horizontal and vertical grid lines (a "dot grid") and (b) enable a "snap to" these points, allowing easier alignment of relations and classes/objects/...
- I can edit the drawing settings; however, they don't seem to be stored for a new diagram. For example, I find shadows unhelpful and always disable them. Would be nice to do once and store the settings.
- In parameterized classes ("templates" in C++) the box for the parameter names depends the class width, making it very wide for classes showing full function declarations. If its size would only depend on the parameter name, it would look better I think (plus, leave more space for relations).
- The "zoom"-method doesn't zoom everything evenly. Especially when changing the "geometry" of relations in a different zoom level, things get mixed up (e.g., horizontal lines don't stay horizontal)
- A possibility to "anchor" labels at certain points on their relations would be nice. I.e., select a label center and snap it to the beginning/middle/end of a relation, where it will stay (relative to the relation). With many relations entereing a class from the same side, the labels are often drawn "over" the relation to the right, where centering would be more readable. In this context it would also be helpful to rotate the labels to match the relation's angle.
- Also, I sometimes have labels in the middle of nowhere. To handle those, it would be nice to get to the relation dialog when (double-)clicking on them, or some other help to find out to which relation they do belong
Anyways, thanks again for a great tool!
Cheers,
Christian