Smalltalk class heirachy

lex at cc.gatech.edu lex at cc.gatech.edu
Mon Dec 13 17:26:18 UTC 2004


> > Then, you'll get the text-based "chart" of the class hierachy.  You
> > can do the same thing to any class, so it would be better than printed
> > version.  (Of course, if you want, you can print out this 16 hundred
> > line chart.)
> 
> Thats horrible, I meant a nice preferably UML notation chart that I could 
> print out and put on my wall.

That's a great thing, but I don't think it is possible to generate it
automatically.  Automatic tools give you accurate information, while
nicely formatted diagrams give you big-picture descriptions of a system.
 A big-picture description must fundamentally leave out tons of detail,
and a good big-picture description is likely to even tell some small
lies in order to simplify the description.

Thus, UML class diagrams seem best when created manually.  Don't focus
on extracting them out of the code; focus on convincing some people to
document parts of Squeak, using class diagrams as part of that
documentation.


Lex



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