Re: XFig vs. dia 5:1

[Lars Clausen <lrclause cs uiuc edu>]

On Sun, 14 Jul 2002, ml knorke in-berlin de wrote:
> Hi,
>
> while I like dia more than XFig because of it's cool GTK+
> GUI, there are some features I miss desperately.  Maybe I
> just don't know, how to use dia rightly:
>
> 1. Hatches: XFig has all kind of lines and other patterns
>    to fill shapes with.  In many cases this is better than
>    using colours, e.g. if it is for printing and no colour
>    printer available.  I did not find any hatches in dia.

No, Dia does not have hatches.  We're more geared towards structured
diagrams than vector art.  It is a good suggestion, though.

> 2. LaTeX special fonts: XFig allows to mark text as
>    "special".  If exported to "Combined PS/LaTeX (both
>    parts)" the result can be included in a LaTeX document
>    while all fonts are the normal LaTeX fonts.  This
>    makes the resulting DVI look very consistent.  I did
>    not find this feature in dia.

THere has been some pondering of LaTeX/Dia interaction, but it's a
difficult thing at best.

> 3. Resizing of groups: XFig allows compound objects (or
>    groups in dia jargon) to be resized.  I don't need to
>    explain why this is good :-)  I didn't manage to resize
>    groups in dia.

The lack of resizing of groups stems from the fact that many objects cannot
be resized.  I agree that that's a problem, but it would take quite a bit
of work to fix.

> 4. Libraries: XFig has some interesting element libraries,
>    much like dia, but different.  I don't know whether one
>    import them in dia, but that would be nice.

Dia can import XFig files with reasonable quality (excepting of course
features Dia doesn't have, plus the bezier translation isn't done yet, as
the two programs use very different models).

> 5. Stability: XFig is (at least for me) a little bit more
>    stable than dia.

0.88.1 was quite unstable.  0.90 is much better.

> Maybe these are some suggestions for dia, maybe some of the
> functions are already there (but I did find them), or maybe
> one could port good ol' XFig to GTK+? :-)

That's been done: <URL:http://k332.feld.cvut.cz/~lemming/projects/gtkfig.html>

-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?