Thank you for expressing in interest in the UCI Graph Editing
Framework.

This file was prepared: 1/16/97.

This file gives some information on known bugs, things that will
change, things that have changed recently, etc.

Please see uci/docs/Overview.txt for an overview of the framework.

This is an "early experience" release. I call it that because I am not
ready to call it a "beta" yet. There are several bugs, and there are
several changes and additions that I want to make that will cause
code reorganizations.  For that reason, I am not planning on doing
much support of this version. Instead I am asking for your support!
Please send me comments about what you would like to see. If you fix
bugs, please send me the fixes. I will try to get a new release out as
soon as it makes sense to do so.

KNOWN BUGS AND MISFEATURES:

see uci/docs/bugs.txt

UNIMPLEMENTED FEATURES AND FUTURE TASKS:

The following features are planned but not yet implemented. If you
would like to help, these are some needed improvements. And they are
the kind of thing that you are likely to want for whatever application
you are building anyway.

1. Multiple perspectives for a given class of nodes.

2. Interactive perspective editor.

3. Alternative views on the same NetList.

4. Zooming, scrolling, small panner/overview window.

5. Layers menu, hide, layer, show layer, spawn layer, add, remove.

6. MouseGrid, snapToGrid.

7. Align centers.

8. Better examples of subclassing different nodes, arcs, perspectives,
layers.

9. Arc perspectives. E.g. curved arcs perspectives would be really
nice.  Gifs, splines.

11. Better text features, specifically styled text and support for
arrow keys to move cursor through text, mouse support...

13. A more general purpose, table driven, way to select Actions for
execution given user interface events (key and mouse) and current
mode.

14. Ability to download new classes of NetPrimitive, DiagramElement,
Actions, and Modes from the net. Also each of those will have
about-box methods.

15. Cut, copy, paste, replicate.

16. Rotation of DiagramElement's and layers.


CHANGES THAT WILL BE MADE IN THE NEAR FUTURE:

1. More Javadoc comments in the code.

2. Update OMT style class diagrams on the web site.

3. Update my web site.

4. A "Cookbook" document that gives instructions for extending the
framework to a specific application. I plan to do it in HTML.

5. Debugging, reacting to comments from interested "early experience"
partners.

6. I have not yet, but I intend to take a serious look at HotDraw and
other graph editing frameworks that have been around for a while. I
find this generally interesting, I wanted to try to make my own
contribution and work through various problems before I looked at how
others have done such things. If anyone would like to do a critical
comparison against HotDraw or anything else I would be very interested.



RECENT CHANGES:

see Changes-v03.txt