Image attribution

Gaphor 2.0 highlights

Írta: Arjan Molenaar (2020-08-05)

Gaphor 2.0 includes some big new features. They were a long time in the making, since most of the development work for Gaphor 1.2 was to lay the groundwork for the changes we wanted to implement for 2.0.

With 49 Pull requests on GitHub, this is by far the biggest release we’ve done so far.

So, what am I excited about you ask? Well, how about:

  • SysML support
  • Customizable style
  • Copy/paste functionality
  • New application logo

SysML support

By introducing SysML, Gaphor now has (basic) support for systems engineering. This new modeling language has been added as a module to the application, therefore, it’s also possible to add other modeling languages, either as part of Gaphor or as separately distributed plugins.

sysml screenshot

Customizable style

Previously, all diagrams in Gaphor were black and white. For this release, we added a CSS styling engine that allow you to add color to your diagrams. There are some powerful styling options that allow you to implement consistent and aesthetically pleasing styles across your model. You can find more examples in the technical documentation

style extravaganza

I may have overdone it for the screenshot, but you get the idea, right?

Copy/paste functionality

Copy/paste functionality has been part of Gaphor for some time. However, it only worked if you did a copy operation and then pasted it directly after. It would fail if you removed a couple of items, or made other changes, between the copy and paste. This update made the copying and pasting much more robust. Now Gaphor makes an internal copy of the diagram item and the underlying model element. In an upcoming version you should be able to copy/paste between diagrams as well.

It’s 2020 and the old logo dated back from the early 2000’s. So it was about time for a new fresh logo.

the old logo the new logo

Old and new logo, side by side.

We hope you’ll enjoy using Gaphor as much as we enjoy building it. Give it a try and let us know what you think.