Re: Development; other diagram types

[Lars Clausen <lrclause cs uiuc edu>]

On Thu, 23 Jan 2003, jonni lehtiranta net wrote:
> Greetings!
>
> I'm having an university level project course about computer
> architecture and I figured I'd use DIA for drawing schematics.
> My needs are higher level than "Circuit" or "Electric" diagram
> types, but the more applicable "Logic" set is rather limited,
> and seriously that until I can at least rotate. So I figured
> out I'd put together shapes of my own.

I have a bunch of updated Logic shapes at home, mostly involving better
icons, but also with the horizontal/vertical distinction.  I'm not putting
them in right now as we're in a feature freeze, but I can send them to you.

> So, I figured out how to export shapes and hand-edit them for
> perfection, but this still leaves two questions:
> - What is the desired line width in components? What
>       should it be preset to? Is there an option for
>       setting line width of new objects according to a
>       "preference" or changing line width of all objects
>       simultaneously?

If you group together objects, you can set properties for them all at the
same time.  There is a bug on it, though, in that all properties are set,
not just the changed ones.

> - What about LINES? I didn't find a "perfect line"
>       anywhere. The UML message is a good arrow but it
>       doesn't snap with another line, so building L-shaped
>       connections seem impossible (to do well).

I don't get what you mean by 'perfect line'.  What can you do with one?
What would it look like?  Have you tried the zigzagline?

>       I'd also like the option to specify both a name and
>       a "number-of-wires" info to an arrow and get them to
>       print nicely.

Let me see if I understand you right:  You want something that can have an
arrow in one end, but a number of lines in the other, and that shows a name
and the number of lines?  Or something else?  Can you do a mock-up perhaps?

> My question is, how hard would it be to build a "diagram
> type" for this kind of work? How could I do it? I guess the
> funny-shaped-boxes with connections etc would not be hard.
> Or, would it, with selectable background colors, text field(s),
> selectable "bit depth" (a big box with a selectable number of
> small boxes underneath)?. And, what about my perfect idea of
> an arrow?=) Programming is not a problem, or not a big one
> anyway, if I can read the code.. =).

Programming new objects is not nearly as hard as it used to be:)  It
doesn't involve GTK programming at all, unless you want to do very unusual
properties.  There's a fair amount of boilerplate, though.  I've started an
overview of how to program new objects on the Dia twiki:
http://faemalia.org/wiki/view/Technical/ProgrammedObject

Whether the individual parts of it would be hard I cannot tell from your
description.  

-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?