Re: PyDia and Metapost

[Lars Clausen <lars raeder dk>]

On Tue, 2006-02-14 at 21:10 -0500, Rob McDonald wrote:
> > Sure - if you have Python installed as well as a compiled version of Dia's
> > Python bindings (pydia) as well as Gtk+ Python binding (pygtk).
> >
> > The latter is only required to run Dia Python plug-ins with GUI like
> > group_props.py. Other stuff implemented in Python like diasvg(_import).py
> > or codegen.py will work without pygtk.
> 
> Ok, I'll hack on that for a while...
> 
> > Fixing the Metapost plug-in would first require to reproduce the issue on
> > a developers machine. One step in that direction would be a complete bug
> > report including all the necessary files and steps description to
> reproduce
> > and understand the bug :
> >
> >   - sample diagram
> >   - sample integration in Latex (command line, tex 'container' file)
> >   - suggested (manually modified) .mp output of Dia
> >
> > Even better would be a thorough analysis of the transfer function for the
> > text size. It may be just a linear scale, but it also may depend on the
> > diagram size, the TeX environment or something completely different ...
> 
> Ok, I'll work on putting together a simple example as well as an analysis of
> what I think is going on.
> 
> First, a simple question.  What the heck does the font size in Dia mean?
> Visually, a font size (cmr10) of 0.30 looks to be about 10pt on screen in
> Dia.  It comes out about 18pt in LaTeX through MetaPost.  Also, I think the
> positioning issue is as simple as positioning the text using the wrong
> vertical reference point (text baseline vs. text box center.)

It means centimeters.

> I would really like a font size that could be deterministically controlled.
> Set it to 10pt, have it come out 10pt.  Where 72pt is known to be 1 inch
> high.  A font size of 0.30 doesn't mean much to me....

There's work on the way to make all measurements unit-aware, but it
hasn't made it into this release.

-Lars

-- 
Lars Clausen (lars raeder dk, larsrc gmail com, http://lars.raeder.dk)
"I do not agree with a word that you say, but I will defend to the
 death your right to say it."
    --Evelyn Beatrice Hall paraphrasing Voltaire