Re: How many use the diagram tree?

[Lars Clausen <lrclause cs uiuc edu>]

On 11 Aug 2003, Alan Horkan wrote:
> On Sun, 10 Aug 2003, James K. Lowden wrote:
>
> > And I've never thought Visio was a paradigm worthy of emulation.  Maybe
> > there are Visio diagrams out there with hundreds of objects on them, but
>
> paradigm.  Visio has a large userbuse and a user interface worth copying
> unless we have a better idea.

*bzzzt* Misuse of word paradigm.  Besides, Visio has a large userbase, but
a user interface worth occasionally looking at for some behaviour.  I don't
want to let Visio define how Dia works -- then we'll forever be playing
catch-up.  

> Speaking of better ideas I have finally been able to download a trial
> version of Rational Rose from IBM.

Good, some new impressions are always worthwhile.  Some of my more
interesting UI ideas come from games.

> > <rant> One thing I've never understood is Visio's facination with
> > handles.  Why?  Any 14-year-old knows a line consists of an infinite set
> > of points.  What's the purpose of picking out some few as more
> > significant than the rest?  Why isn't every point on the line a handle?
> > Draw a line, drag it
>
> It is not just Visio it is just about every vector graphics program I
> have seen.  I guess handles must have seemed simpler to program at some
> point.  I guess the problem is the difference between wanting to simpley
> move or change the shape, the handles make it clear that you want to
> resize rather just select and move.  Certainly being able to join one
> line to anywhere on another line or circumferance would be nice

If you looked at the whole quote, you'd note that he's not talking about
the handles that move or resize an object, he's talking about connection
points (which often are together with handles).

> > To clarify what I meant by "tabbed diagrams".  I've found that even for
> > very complex diagrams, only a few named subsets were worth maintaining.
> > Each one is a kind of sub-diagram, really another perspective on some of
> > the objects.  Suppose each named subset would appear as a tab in the
> > diagram's window, similar to the way tabs work in Mozilla.  I suggest
> > this
[...]
> It might also be possible to achieve what you want by having a object say
> a Rectangle that you can click on and when you do so you are zoomed in
> and get to see the parts that make it up.  This is more a case of better
> handling hiding details at distant Zoom levels.  I am not sure I can
> explain this particularly well.

There's a lot of worth in being able to hide selected parts of a diagram in
a logical manner.

-Lars

-- 
Lars Clausen (http://shasta.cs.uiuc.edu/~lrclause)| HÃrdgrim 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?