Hi again. I’m still enjoing this great piece of code and I’m still really happy with my TDM. Especially the Beta Version, in my opinion, is going in a very promising direction.
Here are 30 suggestions I collected while my daily work with TDM.
I hope some of them can be of some interest.
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In Options/Icons theme drop down menu should not be editable (there’s no need; if you edit it with a wrong selectin and save it, the setting is lost)
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Directory dialogs (like in Options/Paths) don’t allow to past a path. Why don’t you use an ordinary dialog? Developers don’t like to use the mouse and they usually prefere typing things.
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Default “Defaut file name for HTML reports” should be index, as it is a de-facto standard and because most web servers expects index.html. It can be edited, of course: but IMHO, “default.html” is somethin very “old-fashioned”
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A click on Options/TOAD for Oracle Integration fires an error.
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Options/Application is the only menu item which doesn’t show the blue header in the Option window.
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In TDM, function key F2 is “rename” almost everywhere. IMHO, typeing F2 having an entity selected should rename the entity itself
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Buttons “OK” and “Cancel” in entities delete confirmation dialog have no shortcuts (the standard is O_k and C_ancel): it would be confortable for those users used to type alt+O and alt+C instead of using the mouse or the TAB button (who have to type type Down-Down-TAB-TAB-Enter which is a bit annoying)
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Add an option in Options/Logical model to "Set default option in delete confirmation dialog to “Delete in the Model” or “Remove only graphical”. In alternative, let TDM remember the last selection (to be honest I use “Delete in the model”, which is not pre-selected, in 90% of the cases, so everytime I have to type Down-Down-TAB-TAB-Enter (or use the mouse, which is a bit annoying)
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I once wrote you a little suggestion about Overview: sorry if I repeat myself, but after all these months I still don’t understand why Overview panel is something detached from the current Workspace. Overview is meant to be a sort of “zoomed-out-preview” of the Workspace. Let’s suppose you are working on a very big model: to have an overview, you can activate Overview panel. That’s great. Now, let’s suppose you move to another Model (or another Workspace, as well). The old Overview panel is still there: you have to open another overview panel with the result that you have now two Ovierview panels: the old one is completely useless; no matter what you do with it, no changes are made in the Workspace (of course, because it’ not the active one). My proposal: you should have just one Overview and it should be dynamically linked to the current Workspace. I mean, TDM’s Overview panel should work exactly as the Preview panel in Photoshop.
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Model design could be more elegant with relations lines solid and not dashed.
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In Workspace Contextual menu there are two options: “Straight all lines” and “Change lines to right angled”. They cannot be both selected, as they are mutual. IMHO it could be clearer a single item with a single check sign (exactly like Notation/IDF1x and Notation/IE)
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ctrl+f4 could close the Workspace (is almost a standard)
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I personally don’t like the red “Close” icon: well, to be honest, I don’t love too much when a software adopts a non-standard GUI element if there is not a particular need for that. Why don’t you use a stardard icon?
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Overview can’t be docked
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Overview displays the name of the Workspace but not the name of the Model (what if I have 2 Workspaces with the same name in different Models?) Anyway, it could be solved (and in a much more cleare way, with the suggestion 9)
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Entity properties: If you click on the Primarykey icon to add a new Attribute the you click on Keys tab, the Attribute has not been added. If you save and reopen the Entity, the Attribute is properly added. Sometimes adding keys with this system results in duplicate attributes
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Function key F11 may be used to toggle Full page view (To hide and show everything but Workspace)
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A keybord shortcut (I suggest ctrl+click) could be uset to Move/Pan Workspace (instead of Select Move => Pan => type [ESC]: it would be faster!)
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DDL script generation: add an option to generate only Selected Items in the current Workspace (that is: I select one or more items, I click on Generate DDL, I select “Generate only selected” instead of “Generate by property ‘Generate’”
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DDL script generation: add an option to generate All Items in the current Workspace (that is: I’m working on a Workspace with only Views [I usually select one or more items, I click on Generate DDL, I select “Generate only selected” instead of “Generate by property ‘Generate’”
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I noticed ctrl+mouse wheel does a zoom-in and a zoom+out. It’s great. Just add a keyboard shortcut (like ctrl + and ctrl -)
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There’s an option I never seen in any program but I always believed it would be simple and useful: in every program I know, zoom+in zooms following the center of the screen. If I’m zooming using the mouse wheel, I probably want to zoom the object my pointer is pointing: most of the time, I have to zoom then pan the screen to find my object; my suggestion is: zoom following the mouse.
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Again with the zoom: sorry if I repeat myself, but I really believe zoom-in and zoom-out buttons in TDM should immediately zoom-in and zoom-out. Having a zoom-in tool is completely useless, because I usually zoom when I’m working with other tools and because I usually just zoom few steps.
At the moment, zooming with those 2 buttons is: 1. Click on zoom-in/on button 2. Go to the workspace and click to zoom 3. Go back to the tools and choose again your tool. My suggestion is: when the user click on zoom-in, just zoom-in! It’s much simpler -
Look docked element: you can resize them using their vertical splitter. Strangely, not all the splitter can be used: the very central part is inactive. So weird!
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Workspaces are different spaces in a Model: switching between Workspaces of the same Model is as common as switching between different Models.
ctrl-tab and ctrl-shift-tab swicth to the next and previous model but there’s no shortcut to switch between Workspaces. Add similar shortcuts to switch between Workspaces in a Model. -
In MySQL there can be just one autoincrement field, and it is a primarykey. Hence, when I set “Autoincrement” to a field, it should be automatically set as primary key
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When I open an entity, the second tab is selected, but I always have to select the first one, because I must choose a name for it. To me, the most logical choise is having the first tab selected (or, at least, the last opened one in the previous entity?)
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When you edit a field in an entity you can choose between Datatypes and Used Defined Datatypes (the one TDM calls Domains). I like so much they are separated in two different menus! If can as well choose a field’s datatime directely in the entity, using F2: in that case, however, there’s no distinction between standard datatypes and domains. My suggestion is: use a bold type for Domains (suffix their names with a *)
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The datatypes list in 28) is really too short (just 8 items): developers have at least 1024x768 screens, use as much space as you can! The more items you see at a time, the more confortable the editing is
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“Display line names” should be “Display relationship names”: “line” is a bit generic and not about databases
Have a nice day!
They will discuss it. CR # 53 957.
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