archimatetool
[Feature Request] Highlight Relationships
Can we get the relationships highlighted in the diagram when we click on the existing relations and vice versa. This would be an awesome feature add.
If you mean to select relations in the view when selected in the tree and vice-versa, this is already possible with the "Link to View" button.
I meant that if we are clicking on one of the relations, the corresponding relation should get highlighted on the Diagram.
This is for the generated HTML report?
It seems so.
That is actually not easy at all. Elements are made "clickable" through an HTML image map with targets that are simply their bounds (bounding box). This works because most elements have a shape that is almost a rectangle.
Relationships also have bounds, but this is again the smallest rectangle that contains the relationship. This means that if you have a relationship that have several bend points, you'll end up with a very big target and users will be confused because clicking on "visually" free space could lead to click on a relationship.
For it to really work, it would be needed to use a polygon target, with all computation complexity that this involves.
This seems as a good candidate for contribution ;-)
Suggestion which should solve the issue for many cases (but not all), make the relation name (label) clickable. The label bounding box is limited in size. Not perfect, but will allow to select in HTML the relationship which are not straightforward (as they need labels)
Suggestion which should solve the issue for many cases (but not all), make the relation name (label) clickable. The label bounding box is limited in size. Not perfect, but will allow to select in HTML the relationship which are not straightforward (as they need labels)
I thought about it also, but the label is not a real "visual object": it is created at "run" time only when you display it on a view. This makes it impossible to catch when we generate the HTML report.
FWIW, the same limitation impacts jArchi: you can't access element's or relationship's label bounding box.
Thanks JB for the explanation.
As I am not at all familiar with Eclipse display framework, I may express something of little value, but what about in this case to create a real label visual object instead, with the added bonus of creating a blank one also for not named relation.
If it is possible, that would solve the issue, and you can also hilite the sensitive place in HTML when your mouse is over the box (onmouseover) so the user know it can click on it for details.
Unfortunately that's not possible in our context without a full rewrite of the code related to relationships.
Let me tjink about this issue. With some time I might find a good and simple solution.