Papyrus/Oxygen Work Description/NewFeature/Layers

UML and the associated languages (e.g. UML profiles) are often linked to a graphical notation. This notation us used to display diagrams representing the system's elements during its construction, facilitating the comprehension of the system's architecture. It can be useful to put those graphical representations (views) in relation to one another in order to easily visualize the different parts of the system being constructed. The multiplication of those views can lead to a deterioration of the readability of the model and therefore its apprehension. The Layer mechanism is therefore proposed to palliate this problem.

Global representation

Layers will be associated to one or multiple views of the diagram and to one or multiple CSS style that will be applied to those views. In turn, Those Layers will be contained in a LayerStack acting like a Layer repository for this diagram. A diagram can have only one LayerStack and each LayerStack is unique to its diagram.

Example

The UI

The Layer tool is sporting a UI consisting of an explorer (Figure1-1) and a property view associated to each explorer's elements (Figure1-2). Inside the layer property view we can see the associated diagram views (Figure1-3) and the CSS stylesheet that will be applied to them (Figure1-4). If there are available styles for those elements then they will be applied. As we can define multiple styles for each UML type then the application of the sheet can affect the associated views in different ways (Figure1-5&6).

PapyrusLayerMechanism
Figure1