Usubility suggestion and Rounded Rectangles in Dia

[Alan Horkan <horkana tcd ie>]

I have some minor questions about Rounded Recgtangles and i should
probably start providing patches for the web page and faq and docs (i
should add the distribution doc's to the webpage too) any time i get
tripped up by these little things (it is certainly going in my personal
mini-Faq).

usability suggestion:
Double clicking on the icons in the toolbox to set the default behaviour
is in my opion a somewhat unlikely behaviour (to a novice user,
unfamiliar with Gimp) and most of the shapes dont have default options.
.
Perhaps it would help usability if instead the Toolbox buttons had 3
states:
normal,
pressed (click once),
locked (click twice to lock, click agian to unlock and reset to normal)

in the third 'locked state' the shape would be the same as going to
preferences and choosing:
Reset tools after Create  [ No ]

Seeing as some buttons in real life has the mentioned behaviour i hope the
developers will consider it seriously.  (a quick note offlist and i will
file an RFE in bugzilla if asked)

Drawing Rounded Rectangles in Dia

> > While i am being offtopic... (my bad)
> > would it be easy to adapt the rounded rectantle in the UML sheet to be a
> > generic Rounded Rectangle?
>
> The standard box is actually roundable.

I searched through the archives to answer my other questions, and gather
relevant questions to make this post really useful for anyone else who
might dig it up from the mailinglist archive or for the time if/when i add
to the documentation

Question: How do i draw a Rounded rectangle?
Just Double click the rectangle icon in the toolbox and set how rounded
you want the rectangle edges to be.

Alterntively if you want to make an existing rectangle rounded you can
change the 'Corner Radius' value from the properties dialog.

Question: Can other shapes such as polygons have rounded edges?
Answer: Not currently
http://mail.gnome.org/archives/dia-list/2001-August/msg00033.html

Question: Can i have an inverse curve to give me a shape like a
plaque/shield?
Answer: No, the values may only be between 1 and 10, negative values are
not allowed.


Sincerely

Alan Horkan
http://matrix.netsoc.tcd.ie/~horkana/