-----Original Message----- From: Peter B. West [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: February 27, 2002 11:47 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: fop-dev Subject: Re: XMLSpy - FOP
[ SNIP ] Let me just strongly endorse Arved's comment about the oxymoronic "UML design", as in "design by UML". What a bizarre idea. It must be something consultants do. -----End Of Original Message----- I should add, I attempted and rejected the use of UML in this particular instance. As I look back at it, this was more the fault of trying to use UML modelling tools on a 17" screen; by the time all the menus and side windows and toolbars have occupied screen real-estate you have a little quarter-screen window where you can visualize about 2 entire classes or a third of a reasonably useful sequence diagram. :-) So I gave up...the tools and my monitor failed, not the notation. I suspect that if I had used pencil and bristol board and/or a whteboard then UML would have worked out better. I consider prototyping in a high-level language to be detailed design anyway, which is what I really wanted to get at. I don't think there are too many mysteries about the high-level design of an XSL formatter anyway; you draw a couple of blocks and label them Formatter, Renderer, etc etc. :-) OK, OK, maybe not quite that simplistic, but by the time you get down to the problem areas in an XSL formatter it's detailed design. I don't discourage the use of UML but to be honest I've not seen it used much in real life for anything except class diagrams, or capturing requirements, and fairly abstract at that. I will likely end up describing the final prototype with class diagrams and some dynamic diagrams for documentation purposes, but I (personally) gain little from using UML over a prototype. Where the UML will come in most likely is when I look at the "final" prototype and make a determination as to how to port its lessons to C or C++. Right now I am leaning towards C. Regards, AHS
