GUI changes in 5.4?

[wolpert]

This is a minor question… but did the UserTask object change in the 5.4 release of designer? Specifically, an activiti diagram I had pre-5.4 has rectangle blue-shaded objects to represent user tasks. On that diagram which I opened with the 5.4 release of designer, when I add a new UserTask, its now shaded yellow and the rectangle has more rounded corners.  I'm only really asking because it looks different enough. If that's what it should look like, is there a way to get all the user tasks to look the same?

[jbarrez]

Yes - the designer was made to look more like the Modeler.

[wolpert]

Why are the objects made before the change in the old style, and new objects are in the new style… why are they mixed? Specifically, A document I created using the pre-5.4 plugin was edited, so old user tasks look different then the new ones. Is there a way to make them look the same? I'd rather not delete/re-add them.

[tiesebarrell]

This is caused by the fact that the graphical information is stored with the diagram. Things like the colors of lines, widths, gradients, etc are all stored in the diagram. This means that the diagram is not re-rendered upon reloading in a new version of Designer. New shapes are added with the new style, but the old ones remain as they were.

Unfortunately, at the moment, there's no easy way to deal with this. The only way to get new style elements is to add them, which would mean replacing all the old shapes.

[tiesebarrell]

Thinking about this, there's one thing we could do, which is to store a version in the diagram that we can retrieve on loading and detect whether the diagram has no/an old version. If that's the case, open a dialog to the user with the question whether to perform an upgrade. The upgrade would then entail re-creating all of the shapes, which would inherently update them to the new style. It would also be a great way to assist in changed attributes, newer configuration options, etc.

Such a functionality would be a useful addition to Designer IMHO. If you'd like to see this too, please create an issue so we can look into its feasibility.

[walterjs]

I still think that this should all be hidden away in the internals of the designer and the bpmn2.xml should be the primary artifact. Everything you need is in there, so you should be able to generate the .activiti file from it on the fly.

[trademak]

Hi,

It's actually not difficult to get an "old" diagram in the new format.
Just delete the .activiti file (maybe archive it to be fail-save) and open the bpmn20.xml file.
The activiti diagram is regenerated at that point with the new look and feel.
You may need to drag a few elements to get it into a nice shape, but that should work.

Best regards,

[walterjs]

Yes, I tried that as soon as the new version came out, but it is not feasible for me to drag all my elements around again. I've reopened the layout bug as well since the bpmn waypoints are still not created properly either. I'm eagerly anticipating a two-way round-trip!

[trademak]

Hi,

Good to raise the bar, but be aware that this is not easy stuff.
You are very welcome to contribute to the project if you have ideas about this.
Providing example diagrams that we can use for testing would also be great.

Best regards,

[wolpert]

I did try deleting (with backups) the core activiti file, leaving the xml and png one. This forced the layout to be reset. But it looks like it also blanked out the labels of the connectors as well as emptying out the activiti:formKey fields.