Date: Sat, 30 Dec 2006 13:14:16 -0700
From: C. M. Sperberg-McQueen

It has proven very convenient that Alloy is willing to show me the
graphviz input used to generate the visualizations it shows me.
When the graphviz layout algorithm has been defeated by a large
number of arrows indicating relations, so that the lines are hard
to follow and it's hard to tell which label is with which line, it's
comforting to know that I can take the graphviz input, open it in
an image editor like OmniGraffle, and drag things around to make
the layout more legible.  (I do realize that by working harder on
customizing, I can also get output legible enough not to need a
detour through another program. But it's nice to know I can do it
when I need to.)

But when I ask Alloy (in this case, Alloy 4 Beta 5) to show me the
Dot file, it does so in a window with no menus at all.  So if there's a
way to save the dot file in a file, I have not found it.  I've been
copying and pasting, which can be error-prone.

Ditto for the XML representation of the instance.  (In this case,
the display uses the same window, so there are menus, but no
Save As on the File menu.)  In the long run, I expect saving the
XML to the file system will be more important to me than saving
the dot file.

Is there a way to induce Alloy to write the dot file or the XML out to a
file? Is it planned for a future release?  If not, could it be added to an RFE
list somewhere?