89 lines
4.5 KiB
HTML
89 lines
4.5 KiB
HTML
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<meta http-equiv="Content-Language" content="sv">
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<meta name="GENERATOR" content="Microsoft FrontPage 5.0">
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<meta name="author" content="Kim Walden">
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<title>BON method: BONsai drawing tool main</title>
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<body onload="check()" bgcolor="#ffffff" alink="#33cc00" link="#0000ff" vlink="#0000ff">
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<h1>BON Software Architecture Illustrator<br>
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(BONsai)</h1>
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<h2><br>
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Background</h2>
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<p class="first">There has long been a need for a good and widely available drawing tool supporting the BON notation.
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Ever since the book describing the BON method was published in 1994, I have had requests from BON users
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all over the world asking for a simple way to draw nice-looking BON diagrams and
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have them included in system documentation.</p>
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<p>The only tool with BON support available over the years has been EiffelCase from
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Eiffel Software Inc, recently integrated into EiffelStudio<b> </b>(see<b> </b>
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<a target="_blank" href="http://www.eiffel.com">www.effel.com</a>). However, this tool is part of a full Eiffel development environment, which may
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be a bit too heavy for users who only want to communicate designs on paper and
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those unfortunate developers who do not have the option of using Eiffel as
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programming language for their systems. Also, there is no support in EiffelStudio for dynamic diagrams.</p>
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<h2><a name="drawing tool">The drawing tool</a></h2>
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<p class="first">To remedy this, I have finally managed to create a Visio Solution for BON.
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A Visio Solution is a set of graphical shapes whose look and behavior are
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tailored to a specific application area. It uses
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<a target="_blank" href="http://www.microsoft.com/office/visio">Visio</a> as underlying
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drawing engine but can hide virtually all details, enabling users to
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simply combine familiar graphical elements by drag and drop to create the type
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of drawings supported by the Solution (in this case BON diagrams). </p>
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<p>Here is the <a target="_blank" href="bonsai_manual.pdf">BONsai manual</a> (820
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Kb) in pdf format and the <a href="bonsai-1.4.zip">BONsai Visio Solution</a> (1.32
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Mb) for Visio 2000/2002 and for
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Visio 5 bundled with the manual and a drawing example in a zip-file. The
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current version is 1.4 with newly added support for graphical class interfaces. The
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<a target="_blank" href="example.pdf">example drawing</a> is the static
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diagram of the conference management system described in the first case study in
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"Seamless Object-Oriented Software Architecture", and the class
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interfaces on page 45 in the same book. It can be viewed and compared to the original
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<a target="_blank" href="book_example.pdf">diagrams</a> printed in the book (do not
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be mislead by the rather poor rendering on the screen by Acrobat Reader; the
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printed diagrams are high quality).</p>
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<h2>About Visio</h2>
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<p class="first">If you are interested in learning more about Visio in general, "Microsoft
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Visio Version 2002 Inside Out", Nanette J. Eaton, Microsoft Press 2001 is a good
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reference. For developing your own Solutions, the standard reference is
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"Developing Microsoft Visio Solutions", Microsoft Press 2001.
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There is also a <a target="_blank" href="http://msdn.microsoft.com/visio">Visio
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Developer Center</a> at MSDN</p>
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<p><font color="#388C00"><b>Aside</b> </font>The second volume mentioned above is an updated
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version of
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the earlier text "Developing Visio Solutions" by Visio Corporation, which used
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to be one of my favorite handbooks: a slim volume (1.7 cm thick, 0.74 kg, 460 pp)
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with thin paper and compact typesetting, perfect to read on the bus on your way
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to work. It has now been transcribed by Microsoft (who bought Visio in
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1999) into the usual hopeless PC-brick (4.4 cm thick, 1.4 kg, 660 pp) with thick
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paper and large point size, cumbersome on the bus let alone if you drop it on
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your toes, and all this for very little new substance. </p>
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