Re: Dialogs, Layers Dialog [Re: Dia ChangeLog report for Mon Jul 7 07:23:02 2003 (UTC)]

[Lars Clausen <lrclause cs uiuc edu>]

On Tue, 8 Jul 2003, TAZ Vukovic wrote:
> I use layers to organize my diagrams and mainly control visibility of
> groups of items.  I try to group related items in their own layer.
> Layers help me organize diagrams and thoughts.
>
> My one wish is that snaps would be transparent across layers.  As an
> example, in one application, I had a several objects in the ``base''
> layer.  Over that layer I was drawing various diagrams (each on its own
> layer) consisting mainly of arrows, pointing how the objects interacted
> under various circumstances.  It would have been much easier if the
> arrows were connected to the objects on the base layer, as from time to
> time, I had to re-arrange those.

There's really nothing technical preventing this; we could just have a
selector in the Layers dialog for which layers should snap.  However, we'd
have to change active_layer to a list and make the appropriate changes to
iterate over it.  Which means we'll have to consider what functions affect
all layers and what only the active layer.  Click/drag select should
obviously only be the active layer, but how about the fancier select
methods?  

It'd also be nice to be able to move objects between layers.

As you can see, there are some things we need to consider before we do
this.  I'd like to hear more about how layers are used by people before we
commit to this change.

-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?