Details Pane

The Details pane provides access to all of the aspect of the model elements. Within this pane, you can view and modify properties of the elements, define additional properties, and navigate between elements.

The pane is composed of eight tabs:

The following sections investigate these tabs in greater detail.

Properties Tab

The most important tab is the Properties tab, which is selected by default. The Properties tab looks a little different for each different type of model element. So far in this tour we have selected packages, diagrams and classes. All of these elements have only one common property, the property 'name'. It makes sense that this would be the only field in this tab which is duplicated for all of the elements.

An important property, the zoom factor, becomes visible in the Details pane when a diagram name is selected in the Navigation pane. You can use the slider to change the zoom factor interactively or use the buttons to set it to pre-selected zoom factors (The range of zoom factors is limited in the Community Edition). To access this property, select a diagram in the Navigation pane or click on empty space in the Diagram pane.

Figure 6-3. Properties tab with zoom

But the real power and importance of the Properties tab becomes apparent for complex model elements like classes or methods. For these, the Properties tab becomes an important tool to view and change the model details. As a general rule, properties that can be changed are placed to the left. On the right, related model elements are displayed. By clicking on the related model elements, you can navigate to them and change their properties. This way, you can drill down from a package to a class to a method to its parameters and so forth.

Figure 6-4. Drill-down navigation

C++ Properties

The C++ functionality has been ported from the Embedded Edition. The available properties are dependent upon the element currently selected.

Figure 6-5. C++ tab for an attribute

Note: Not available in the Community or Standard Editions

Style Tab

Figure 6-6. Style tab for an element without compartments

The Style tab allows you to control the display of elements within a particular diagram. If, for example, you wanted all your classes in a diagram to have fill color green, you can select all the elements (using the mouse, or by pressing Ctrl-A) and then use the color chooser to change their color to green. You can also change the line color, text color, font, and font size. The display properties of an element exist only within that diagram, that is, if you give a font color to a class in one diagram, that font color will not be automatically applied to the other diagrams in which that element appears.

The display of compartments is also configurable from the Style tab. In general, the visibility of compartments (for those elements that have compartments, such as classes) is determined at the diagram level. But this can be altered for individual elements without affecting the rest of the elements in that diagram. Select the option "Specify individual compartment display" and enable or disable the appropriate checkboxes.

Figure 6-7. Style tab for an element with compartments

To Do Items Tab

Figure 6-8. To Do tab in the Details pane

Snooze Critique

The Snooze critique button temporarily turns off a single critique. The critique will return without a user specifically re-enabling it.

Toggle Critique

The Toggle critique button allows you to turn off and on single critiques. This feature is available in the Standard and Professional editions of Poseidon.

Turn Off Autocritique

Critiquing can be turned off completely from the Appearance tab of the Settings dialog. Uncheck the box titled, 'Perform Automatic Critiquing' to disable critiques. The tab will still be visible in the Details pane, but no critiques will be listed.

Source Code Tab

Figure 6-9. Source code tab for a class

At the start this code just represents the skeleton that has to be filled with content. For example, method names and the corresponding parameters may already present and defined, but the method body might still be empty. With most of the target languages, you can use this editor to fill in the body. With round-trip engineering you can also use any other external editor or IDE. Note also that documentation entered in the Documentation tab is included in the generated code.

The editor in Poseidon will not allow you to change all of the code. The sections of code which are highlighted in blue are 'read-only' in the Poseidon editor. Text highlighted in white may be edited, deleted, and appended. This functionality originates from a NetBeans project and is the result of a plug-in.

New in version 2.1 is the ability to select the target language of the source code. The list of available languages is dependent upon the list of enabled plug-ins and profiles. Each language must have both the plug-in and profile specific to that language enabled.

The same diagrams may be used to generate code in different languages. Any code written in the 'your code here' sections is available only in the language selection in which it was written. For example, any code manually entered into the editable section of this tab while Java is the selected language will not be seen if the language is changed to C# or Perl.

Should there be ambiguity, a second dropdown will appear next to the language selection dropdown in order to determine the correct option for the implementation.

Documentation Tab

Figure 6-10. Documentation tab for a class - WYSIWYG and source

The Documentation tab provides a mechanism for adding your own freeform text as well as supported JavaDoc tags to the generated code.

There are a couple of choices for entering text - you can use the WYSIWYG editor and format the text using the documentation toolbar, or you can edit in plaintext mode and add html formatting tags by hand. Both methods result in html-formatted text; for instance, pressing 'Enter' while in the WYSIWYG tab generates a new paragraph with the <p> </p> tags, and pressing 'Ctrl-Enter' generates the <br /> tag.

This information is stored as tagged values and can be previewed in the Java Source tab. Any entries made via the editor on the left side of the tab are placed in paragraph tags by default and are displayed before the JavaDoc entries.

Toolbar

Cut

Copy

Paste

Undo

Redo

Search and Replace

Align Left

Align Center

Align Right

Bold

Italic

Underline

Subscript

Superscript

Font Color

Insert Default Table

Insert Table

Numbered List

Bulleted List

Decrease Indent

Increase Indent

Link to Model Element

Insert Hyperlink

Insert Bookmark

Insert HTML

Insert Span

Insert Image

Insert Text

Insert Horizontal Line

Insert Symbol

Show All Formatting Characters

Remove Formatting

Open Style Properties Dialog

Display Document Statistics

Dropdowns

Paragraph Style

Font Type

Font Size

Style Sheet

Constraints Tab

Figure 6-11. New constraint in the Constraints tab

The UML does not include specifications regarding constraint language. Poseidon is now able to hold constraint information that is language independent, including plain English. Of course, you are still free to use OCL if you so choose.

Tagged Values Tab

Figure 6-12. Documentation stored in the Tagged Values tab

If, for example, you need special information for external processing of the model you can add this information here. This is also where Poseidon stores any documentation entered in the Documentation tab.