BSA – Sub-diagrams

Yet Another Fake Diagram. The symbols are real, but the links between the symbols are fakes yet… give me a few days. But, the fun is that I have reached a point where it is easier to make illustrations using BSA than Powerpoint.

The illustration show a classic sub-diagram – you have a state symbol that also is a diagram and some tools allow you to see the sub-diagram directly. I can do this, but I am a bit undesided on wherever I want to or not – or the details because it makes no sence to me unless you connect the input and exit points to the diagram edge as illustrated below:

This last version makes it clear what output is used where and make more sence for me since the first one actually could be misleading. I also used the smaller exit symbols in this case to save space, but thats details for later discussions. The actual drawing inside the sub-diagram would have to be scaled – and if I do this it will be an option to display description or this.

I will leave this as an idea for now because I also need to take readability of executable logic into mind. The challenge with diagrams versus actual code is that executable details tends to be hidden and making it more difficult to read/debug logic. I have an idea of how to counter that, but that will be for a later entry.

Update: I have to admit that I don’t see the purpose of displaying sub-diagrams as illustrated above. The reason is because I expect them to be far more complicated than ilustrated here + you can double click and jump to them anyway. As you use a building block you should either trust it or jump in and review/debug it. But, diagrams using a building block should abstract and tell you what it does, not dig into the details of how it does it – this is the exact same way you work if you make a function call in source code.

Navigation between diagrams will be important. KiCad have a nice feature where you can click yoursef into a sub-diagram and use a tool in the toolbar to click yourself back – I think a version of that might be usefully to mavigate between diagrams – or maybe the option to set bookmarks or have a outline tree etc.

Categories: HMI

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