Re: Dia extensions

[Lars Clausen <lrclause cs uiuc edu>]

On Tue, 20 Aug 2002, Daniel Pérez Alcázar wrote:
> Hello,
>
> It's my first time I write to this list.
>
> I'm writing because I wanted to write a program, but  I concluded that
> Dia would do the job better. I want to  know if my problem can be
> solved by Dia.
>
> My idea was to write a program to help CS students from Barcelona's CS
> Faculty (FIB) to choose among the different optional  subjects. You
> may say ''Dear Dani, it is not a so difficult task!", but it is! The
> thing is that, as many other faculties, FIB has a lot of optional
> subjects (and they are more than  1/3 of your curriculum) and they
> have requisites among them. The goal of the program would be to draw a
> diagram of the subjects you would have choosen, but furthermore, it
> would help with requisites and automatically would draw any requisite
> of any subject you would choose.
>
> I think that there isn't any problem to create a new library, like
> UML, Sybase or any Dia library, where each member would be a subject,
> with information related to it, hours per week, teachers, etc... But
> my question is the following: imagine I have created  my subject
> library: I have the subject CL1 (compilers I) and CL2 (compilers II)
> for example. I click on CL2 and I drag it in my Dia sheet. Because CL1
> is a requisite of CL2, it would be desirable to Dia draw it for me
> (and furthermore, draw a "link" between both subjects). And also check
> if, in the current sheet, I haven't spent all week hours for optional
> subjects.

This is possible only in the current CVS version of Dia.  We've added back
pointers that would allow an object to check the entire diagram.  It's also
possible to have one object add another, but there's no realy layout
support.  

> I have not read any Dia source code line yet, at the momment I'm only
> looking for advice.

My advice would be:  Go to freshmeat.net and do some searches.  There are
specialized tools for this that may better serve your needs:

http://freshmeat.net/projects/jadvisor/
http://freshmeat.net/projects/jcarnegie/
http://freshmeat.net/projects/scheduler/

Dia could be used for this, but I wouldn't consider it the best tool.

> Thanks in advance. Excuse me if my written English is bad (my spoken
> English is worse :-) )

Isn't it funny how only those non-native English speakers whose English is
quite good apologizes for their bad English? :)

-Lars

-- 
Lars Clausen (http://shasta.cs.uiuc.edu/~lrclause)| Hårdgrim of Numenor
"I do not agree with a word that you say, but I   |----------------------------
will defend to the death your right to say it."   | Where are we going, and
    --Evelyn Beatrice Hall paraphrasing Voltaire  | what's with the handbasket?