RE: Dia on Windows (0.96.1) old build. Issues may be fixed ?

["Kerry, Richard" <richard kerry siemens com>]

Lars,

Thanks for taking the time to answer.
Apologies for sounding so negative - it is however very encouraging that you have often answered that my points are addressed in more recent development, or are just documentation being out of date.
I would like to see a new build soon and then I can try out these and other issues and I'll then feel a bit more confident that I'm making suggestions for improvements in a program that I know is the most recent (or almost so).

I may be able to help with documentation but as I am working behind a firewall which doesn't appear to let CVS traffic through I my have problems.  


Appreciatively,
Richard.
 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: dia-list-bounces gnome org 
> [mailto:dia-list-bounces gnome org] On Behalf Of Lars Ræder Clausen
> Sent: 04 February 2009 14:36
> To: discussions about usage and development of dia
> Subject: Re: Dia on Windows (0.96.1) old build. Issues may be fixed ?
> 
> On Wed, 2009-02-04 at 14:03 +0000, Kerry, Richard wrote:
> >  
> > I've recently installed Dia, having seen a diagram in the Bugzilla
> > documentation similar to what I wanted to do.
> > I seem to have found a handful of problems, some of them are issues
> > where the help-file doesn't appear to be correct.  I don't know
> > whether I'm misunderstanding something or the help is not 
> the correct
> > build for the program.
> >  
> > 1.
> > I'd like to change a drawing from compressed to 
> uncompressed XML.  The
> > default is compressed but I want to version control my document so
> > prefer it to be uncompressed xml.  I needed to do this by 
> saving with
> > a new name, renaming, deleting to get this to happen.  Should I have
> > been able to do this just by clearing the "Compress saved files"
> > option and resaving ?
> 
> Yes.
> 
> > 2.
> > Right-click on the canvas.  Nothing happens.  The manual 
> says do this
> > to get Select Connected/Transitive Objects menu to appear but it
> > doesn't.  That's only available from the Select menu.
> 
> The manual is old enough that it doesn't know about the 
> current default
> style of menus, only the older Gimp-style menus.  You can 
> toggle between
> these in the preferences.
> 
> > 3.
> > When I open existing diagram file, I prefer canvas to be 
> same size it
> > was for last edit, .
> 
> That is not yet stored in the save file, though there's a 
> suggestion up
> for it.  Also other edit-relevant settings (zoom level, position in
> diagram etc) should be stored there.
> 
> > 3a.  Subsidiary windows (layers, diagram tree) open very small first
> > time.  Though on a subsequent run they do pick up the size they were
> > before.
> 
> They probably open with the minimum size that fits their 
> (few) elements.
> 
> > 4.
> > Can't change a line to a PolyLine.  I've drawn my diagram 
> with Lines.
> > On occasions I've found that I want to route one around 
> another item.
> > In this case I've needed to create a new PolyLine for this. 
>  Would it
> > be possible to remove the distinction, at least internally, 
> and allow
> > corners to be added to Lines.
> 
> The thought has definitely crossed my mind, several times 
> even. Problem
> is that the Line object has a few extra features that would have to be
> implemented on the PolyLine as well. Could be fun to integrate the
> ZigZagLine, but that's more tricky.
> 
> > 5.
> > Editing Text.  The Delete key deletes the object not the 
> character and
> > is thus different from most other Windows programs.  Also ctrl+arrow
> > doesn't jump by word.  I've seen an entry in the Archives indicating
> > that some change have recently been done in this area and also a
> > discussion about a new Installer build, the first since 2007;
> > hopefully this will come soon.
> 
> This is fixed in the 0.97 release, which Hans and compatriots are hard
> at work at polishing off.
> 
> > 6.
> > Can I render to png (say) from the command line ?  Yes I can.
> > Actually the Help files say nothing specifically about the command
> > line except for a handful of references in passing.  I have 
> found that
> > dia --help has a bit more to say but it should be in the manual
> > somewhere.  And not even -?, --help was mentioned in the current
> > manual.
> 
> That would be great to have added to the manual.  Could you do that?
> 
> > 7.
> > From a plain install I always get a Warning dialog at startup -
> > "Several object types were named Cisco - CDDI-FDDI" etc.  
> Surely this
> > shouldn't be giving warnings without my having done anything ?
> 
> Fixed in 0.97.
> 
> > 8.
> > The File menu on a canvas includes Open but doesn't include recently
> > used items but the one on the toolbox does.
> 
> That is... kinda inconsistent.
> 
> > I suspect several of these are due to the very old Windows 
> build so I
> > hope a new build will be available soon.
> > Apologies if all these have been addressed recently - I look forward
> > to trying a new build but if there isn't one soon I may move to a
> > different package.
> 
> Yeah, it's been taking quite a while to get the new one out. I hope a
> beta release comes along soon.
> 
> -Lars
> 
> 
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