Re: Re2: extending dia

[Lars Clausen <lrclause cs uiuc edu>]

On Mon, 15 Apr 2002, Thorsten Roggendorf wrote:
> Hi,
>
> My precise requirements:
> I have written shapes in xml/dia/svg. That approach could completely
> cover my drawing needs. I do however need a way to add "invisible"
> properties to my shapes. These properties - parameters - would be edited
> in property dialogs like the ones for UML but would assumedly only
> necessarily affect the xml output of dia.
> It might be possible to hack this in xml using the textbox, but that
> seems to be a rather dirty approach that would also make for ugly
> parsing in my backend.
> The ideal would look somehow like this:
> Let's assume I want to have an element that represents a line-function
> (y = slope*x + offset). I edit the xml/svg file:
> [.. header, connections ...]
>       <attribute name="slope">
>               <real val=""/>
>       </attribute>
>       <attribute name="offset">
>               <real val=""/>
>       </attribute>
> [... shape definition in svg ...]
> If I create that shape in dia, I can set slope and offset in the
> properties dialog - the displayed shape would not be affected, but the
> values would be stored in the *.dia file in xml.
> As far as I can tell that is not yet possible, right?
> It might also be nice to have svg:text supported, but that might not be
> essential.
> So, what do you think? How much effort?

This idea of 'hidden' properties has come up a couple times before.  They
should be real easy to do, and might open for some interesting scripting
plugins.  The only tricky thing may be managing the names.

Disclaimer:  I am not very familier with the XML/properties code at all.

-Lars

-- 
Lars Clausen (http://shasta.cs.uiuc.edu/~lrclause)| Hårdgrim of Numenor
"I do not agree with a word that you say, but I   |----------------------------
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