AP development tools an AP230 viewpoint

Reports on other development tools will be included here in due course.

PDIT's FirstStep XG (EXPRESS-G tool) version 1.0

There are a number of apparent problems with FirstStep XG. Some of the problems appear to be bugs, some are simply "features". Many of the problems are minor irritations, some constitute significant obstacles to AP developers working on a MicroSoft Windows platform.

AP230 developers at the University of Leeds have found work-arounds for some of these problems and welcome contributions (of problems or work-arounds) from other users of FirstStep XG in the STEP community.

  1. "Undo" does not work.
  2. Supertype / subtype links which span pages are not recorded in EXPRESS reports. The current work-around at LU is to edit the EXPRESS manually.
  3. "Copy" does not reliably overwrite the current clipboard.
  4. Shift-clicking with the mouse does not work as a method for de-selecting free text which has been selected (along with other objects) by dragging. Shift-clicking does work for all other XG screen objects.
  5. Diagrams will not copy / cut and paste properly into MS products - or any other DTP / presentation applications we know of.
  6. The only way to import diagrams from XG into MS products is to select "print to EPS file" (in the control panel); print one page at a time from XG; import the files thereby created into the MS file; select a PostScript print driver (in the control panel); deselect "print to EPS file" (in the control panel); and print out the diagrams. The diagrams cannot be viewed on the screen (a limitation of MS products) but do print - after a fashion. In order to achieve a satisfactory result, settings (for margins, scaling etc.) in the source and destination files need a great deal of tweaking, and much of this tweaking has to be done blind - for the reasons given. No way has been found to carry out this process under NT. The current work-around at LU is to overprint AP document pages.
  7. Which switching between NT and Windows 3.11, EXPRESS-G diagrams sometimes become distorted - arcs begin halfway across nodes. This can be fixed by selecting everything and moving it slightly - redrawing has no effect.
  8. There is a limit (of about 50) on the number of links from another page to an entity. The current work-around at LU is to give all page references - which originate on a single page and which lead to a particular entity - the same identity number. These links can then be served by a single "onto this page" reference on the destination page.
  9. The mechanism for redrawing supertype / subtype links when entities are repositioned does not work in the same way as that for other links. The horizontal elements of such links often have to be repositioned manually and, sometimes, entities have to be temporarily repositioned so that this can be done.
  10. The zoom facility does not zoom in on the objects at the centre of the current window. The second zoom takes the user some considerable distance from his / her original location.
  11. Under certain settings, fonts are sized randomly when printed.
  12. Page size, page orientation, and margin settings are taken from and to revert to printer setup settings. This makes using the viewer problematic and, on some setups, makes it very difficult to reset margins. (On such setups, the user has to go into Control Panel and select None rather than Default in the Margins dialogue box.) It would be better if such settings were held with the exg file rather than based on global selections.
  13. No mechanism for multiple page references.
  14. There is no list of recently used files under the file menu.
  15. There is no "fit page to window" facility under zoom.
  16. There is no "go to page #" facility.
  17. There is no "go to entity ......" facility.
  18. Cut, copy and paste do not have the usual keyboard equivalents.
  19. Under NT, boxes and rounded boxes are drawn (by default) as small as possible for a given font size. Under Windows, the same objects are drawn to a much larger standard shape and size.
  20. There is no mechanism for automatically updating page references when entities are moved between pages.
  21. Links (across pages) can only be joined and separated globally. It would be useful to be able to do this for individual links or groups of selected links.
  22. Dragging in order to select does not initiate scrolling when part of the target selection lies out of the current window - a different magnification has to be selected.
  23. There is no means to import EXPRESS and convert it to EXPRESS-G.
  24. The software does not allow multiple files to be opened within one incarnation. The software permits multiple incarnations, but does not continue to work properly under these conditions - e.g. there is no way to cut and paste between different files open under different incarnations of the application.
  25. There is no way to create multiple schemas in the same file - no schema referencing facilities.

MicroSoft's Word version 6.0

Within APs, "EXAMPLES" are numbered sequentially throughout the document. The Easiest way to do this in Word is to use an "autonum" field; but this inserts a full-stop after the number. This does not accord with the rules for the presentation of AP documentation and we have not yet found a work-around - other than manual numbering of "EXAMPLES".

This page is maintained by M A Ward

Last updated 22 April 1997

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