Agenda:

Discuss UI, AcmeStudio tooling, and broader Acme ADL research issues.

• We have new staff on AcmeStudio--Patrick McMillholland
• For a nice comprehensive intro on UI issues, Bonnie John recommended User-Interface for Dummies

UI Issues (sorted by AcmeStudio features):

1. Connection feature
   1. If more than one rule is defined between two port types in the current design, the new definition overrides the old
      1. Warn user of override, or
      2. Ask user whether to override? (i.e., make it a preference)
   2. How to do n-ary connection?
      1. Make n-ary connection pattern-based, e.g., with pub-sub, the connection feature can be specialized to distinguish between publisher and subscriber port types
      2. Other patterns?
   3. Jung-Soo: Use context menu for connection (can be used for n-ary connection)
   4. Support selecting the "Connect" mode to define new rules --select two port type, and then select "Connect" to instruct AcmeStudio to define those two types as a new rule
   5. Jonathan: Support type-specific connect mode -- choose one connector type in Connect mode, and all subsequent connector instantiations will be of that connector type
2. Rules
   1. Better text view of rule ==> need multi-line textbox
3. Diagram Editor Type Palette
   1. Palette needs to be configurable, or selective of what types to show
   2. For example, if Acme were to support "abstract" type, then palette shouldn't show the abstract types
4. Type Browser
   1. Not working!
   2. We support viewing parent types
   3. It would be nice to support viewing/navigating to children types, as in Eclipse Type Hierarchy view.
5. Family-editing
   1. Table editing is not being widely used
   2. Structured vs textual editing--they're complementary and we need both
   3. Nice to have type hierarchy available during family editing
   4. Some use of drag and drop to designate supertype?
6. Visualization
   1. System Visualization
      • Not working!
   2. Element Visualization
      1. Label choices--checkbox style instead of radio style enumerating explicit combinations?
      2. Decorations might also need labels?
      3. Aggregate visualization options (JungSoo: select multiple port types and edit vis)
      4. Allowed port types:
         1. Currently added as visualization rule
         2. Perhaps we can use syntactic work-around to specify the allowed port types without using Armani
7. Other constraint issues
   1. Consider enhancing AcmeStudio with support for constraints that are non-predicate like
   2. Example: Arity of connection, which would have been useful for the MDS style
8. Exporting output
   1. Support for legends
   2. Export or output of AcmeStudio diagram as some form of (Microsoft?) picture object?
   3. A possibility: Bob Balzer's Powerpoint-based editing for architecture models.

1. Minor details
   1. In the Design Rule dialog: Label: (... ) <== missing right parenthesis

ADL Issue

1. Need to support "abstract" type in Acme
2. xAcme Schemas are in place, multiple schemas are necessary to get the full Acme capabilities
3. Type name conflict:
   1. When types from two families have a name conflict, instance can qualify which type it declares: component x : Fam1.CompT; component y : Fam2.CompT; If not qualified, then language implicity chooses one
   2. This implicit choice is __BAD__. Need to somehow let the user know, a tooling issue.

Bigger Research Items

1. Multiple views/projections of the same model
   1. Mix-ins in addition to inheritance (from Nick @ JPL)
   2. Interesting calculus of syltes--how should merging of styles be done, and how can tool support it?
      1. Conflicting names
      2. Different names intended for the same target or purpose
   3. Projection of a model through a particular style\\e.g., view this system through the Pipes-and-Filter style

Paper Idea

1. What challenges are encountered in designing an architecture design environment?
2. What is our approach?
3. Grappling with Eclipse--arising from fundamental difference between architecture design and programming?

Future Tool Extensions

1. Bridge to code via ArchJava
2. Others? for next meeting...