Re: Relative file paths for images

[Jay Smith <jay JaySmith com>]

On 12/08/2010 12:03 PM, zoomer wrote:
> Hi, is there a way to point to an image file with a relative path?
>
> For example, instead of: "C:\my project\graphics\image.png"
>
> I would like to use: "graphics\image.png"
>
> In this example my .dia file would be located in C:\my project
>
> Relative paths would be a huge help for me right now.  I have hundreds of
> images in my diagram... but my file folder structure has changed so all
> images appear broken.   I need to manually update the path of each image...
> but if paths were relative I wouldn't have to do this.

Zoomer,

I am new here, but....

Dia files "filename.dia" are XML plain text files.  They can be edited 
with a PLAIN text editor that does not add any formatting.  For example, 
since you are talking about C:, you must be on Windoze, thus you could 
use Notepad.

First, make a backup copy of the file!!!!!!

Then open the file and search in it for some portion of the filename or 
pathname, or perhaps "png".

There you will see what Dia thinks the path is and how it is structured.

I don't know how it works on Windoze and I don't know what version of 
Dia you are using or if it works differently than the version I am using 
(either 0.97 or 0.98 -- I installed 0.98, but it is telling me it is 
0.97 ... on LINUX).

On *MINE* it *IS* putting in relative pathnames to the images.  But that 
is because I can go to a particular directory before I start Dia from 
the command line.  I do not know if you have a command line method for 
starting Dia on Windoze.  Thus on *MINE*, if I start Dia from a command 
line while I am in a MyDiaStuff directory and my images are in the same 
directory, the image information in the .dia file simply has just the 
image filename.  However, if I am in /home/myname when I start Dia and 
then I import the image from /home/myname/MyDiaStuff, then the image 
information in the .dia file is "MyDiaStuff/filename.png"

If you don't solve the relative path problem, then you can either a) 
"simply" change the information in the .dia files; b) you can create 
links to the image directories on Windoze (can Windoze do that?); c) you 
can move the image directories to be where your files expect them to be 
(which you don't want to do).

If you have lots of documents, there are methods to make these kind of 
find/replace changes using a script (batch command file), but since I 
don't use modern Windoze, I don't know the name of the Windoze program 
used for that.  But, with the right command you could change the paths 
in thousands of files all at once.  (Just MAKE BACKUPS FIRST; it can be 
tricky because of the slash and backslash characters which may need to 
be escaped (protected)).

If you have just one diagram, then you could use the find/replace in a 
text editor like Notepad (to change the current absolute path to a 
different absolute path).  The key, however, is to NOT use a text editor 
that changes or adds any formatting.

Jay