[ddri]

Swimlanes are an essential part of diagramming and I'm glad to hear that they are at least being triaged in some manner. I'd like to add my support for getting them on the roadmap, and I would point towards the freeware (sadly not open source) yED as an example of an "almost there" implementation.

In term's of yED's version:

PROs
- Automatic Swim Lane template
- Right-click contextual "Add a Column" and "Add a Row" customisation
- Some control over the default variables of the Swim Lane template

CONs
- Inserting rows and columns occurs at the end of the existing ones, with no "Insert Above" or "Insert Below" options as we come to expect from similar functions in spreadsheets
- No way I could see to control the dimensions of all of the lanes (resulting in manual click-drag-adjust)
- No automatic resizing
- Difficulty in positioning the objects/actors/nodes in the lanes, requiring back-and-forth between vertical and horizontal positions
- Lots of manual effort

This might be something niche to business analysts, but it's an important and popular tool. Having the positioning of the nodes as automatic and responsive tot he adjustments of the swim lanes is important, but so is the inverse in perhaps having the option to have the swim lanes adjust to fit around the nodes inside.

As it stands, we're left using alternative tools, or else being drawn back to Visio. I'm certainly not the only one that moved TO OmniGraffle as a Mac user wanting to move AWAY from Visio. To have to use Visio as well... that's an incentive to drop my OmniGraffle license. Hopefully we see swim lanes this year (2013). I would be happy to provide DC/RC/Alpha/Beta testing on any efforts.