The Properties View displays detailed information about the currently selected object: the object’s sub-structure and any properties and representations of the element. For systems, the substructure contains the components and connectors in the system. For components, the ports associated with this component are listed while roles are listed for a selected connector. You can use the tab bars to choose whether to view properties or representations by selecting the appropriate tab.
The Basic Tab allows you to edit the name of the component, and provide a description of what the component is. To commit a name change, press return while in the text box. To commit a description change, simply select outside the description text box.
The properties tab allows you to add and change properties associated with the element selected in an editor. Each property is organized into three columns. The first column is the name of the property, the second is the type, and the third displays the value (or <<No Value>> if the value of the property is not yet set). To change an existing property, you can either double-click on the row containing the property or edit in line. Double-clicking opens a property editing dialog which allows you to edit all three aspects of the property, as well as add meta-properties to this property. Editing in-line, by placing you cursor in one of the columns and hovering for a moment, brings up various editors for each cell in the row. For types, completion hints are available: typing Ctrl-space will give the list of types available.
The inline value editor has a drop down with a number of quick buttons. Selecting [Submit] changes the value; [Cancel] will abandon any changes you made; [Clear] will remove the value (making the property have <<No Value>>).
The properties tab provides two actions to the Properties View, as highlighted in the figure. Clicking on the Add Property button allows the creation of new properties, and selecting delete properties deletes the selected properties. These actions can be accessed by right-clicking over the table.
The
Rules Tab shows all the Acme rules associated with the selected element.
Information about a rule is organized into four columns. The first column
indicates whether the rule is inherited from one of the element’s types. The
second column indicates how the rule evaluated. If it is
, this means that the rule evaluated
to true. If the column has a
icon, it means that the rule is currently
being evaluated. If the rule is false, and is an invariant, then
is displayed, otherwise if it is a
heuristic then
is displayed.
If the rule failed to parse or typecheck properly, then
is displayed. If the rule could not
be evaluated due to, for example, encountering a property that has no value,
then
is displayed. Rules
that have errors can be expanded to display the errors by expanding the tree
using the +.
Rules can be added and deleted by selecting the actions in the Properties View, or edited by double-clicking on them. This brings up the rule dialog, which allows you to edit the correct Acme syntax for a rule.
The rule dialog allows rules to be entered and more friendly
labels to be associated with the rules. If a rule in the top section is
modified, the OK button of the dialog is disabled until the rule is parsed correctly.
This is done by selecting the Parse Rule button and correcting any errors that
appear in the Parse Errors section. If a label has been entered for the rule,
the action will
toggle between displaying the label and displaying the Acme rule syntax.
The Structure Tab shows all of the sub elements of the selected element. If the entire system is selected, this shows a list of the components and connectors in the view; if the selected element is a component, then its ports and their types are shown; if a connector, then the roles are shown.
Structure can be added to or removed from the selected element by using the contributions of the element view. Only actions appropriate to the selected element will be shown (for example, if a component is selected, only the action to add ports will be shown).
The Types Tab lists all the types that this element derives from. If the selected element is a type, this shows all the super types.
The right panel of the tab shows the type hierarchy of the selected element.
An element may have one or more representations representing substructure. The Representations Tab displays each representation, along with a thumbnail view of what the representation looks like. Double-clicking on the representation navigates to the representation in the Diagram Editor.
The Errors tab shows any errors that were detected when type checking the selected element. If an error marker appears on an element in the diagram, then this tab will display the details of all errors associated with that element. Double-clicking on an error will navigate to the source of the error.
The Source tab shows the Acme source for the selected element. It is not possible to change the source in this view.