Re: parenting (patch)

[Lars Clausen <lrclause cs uiuc edu>]

On Mon, 30 Jun 2003, Vadim Berezniker wrote:
> Vadim Berezniker wrote:
> > Hans Breuer wrote:
> >
> > > At 03:59 27.06.03 -0400, Vadim Berezniker wrote:
> > I've fixed those now.
>
> The patch is available at http://kryptolus.com/parent4.tgz btw.

An excellent patch!  Thank you for adding a much-asked-for feature.  I am
just now committing it.

There's a few things that should be added to make it fully integrated: An
easy way to unparent a single child, ways to select children/parents from
the select menu, a way to make a parent 'sticky' so that any old object
dragged in will become a child, proper subtreeing in the diagram tree
(which should also happen for groups), making children
invisible/unselectable, etc.

Once the parenting things are complete, we may want to replace group with a
specialized parent object.

We need to figure out which other objects should be parentable -- I don't
think the regular boxes should be (unless it's a flag), as they are also
used for just background and such.  I could imagine the Chronogram Timeline
being a parent, and surely others too.

As for file format description, the current version has the problem that
older versions of Dia loses the children totally.  It'd be better if they
were still there, but of course with no parent.  That would require a
crosslink like what the connections do.

I think this is an important enough addition that I want to get 0.92 out as
soon as it has a few more of the above fixed, and autorouting is more
stable (needs undo).  

-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?