Re: imho

[Lars Clausen <lrclause cs uiuc edu>]

On Fri, 6 Jun 2003, HSchuetze snt-ag de wrote:
> "Please try it out and tell me what you think of it."
> ok i will do that:
> First of all, we are a system vendor. For cost reasons i have the job to
> evaluate dia for the inhouse use.We use Windows as the main system and
> UNIX/LINUX is not the main theme here.
> I think Dia is a great piece of Software. For a version 0.91 its really
> really good and stable.
> But i really missed out three things:
> 1. The automatic draw of new and finer grid lines. These allow, like Visio,
> the exact positioning of objects. Without that, DIA can't really used to
> draw org charts.

I did an experiment with this, but I'm not sure that I liked what I got.  I
had it so that it'd draw grid lines for the nearest power of ten.  It
seemed awfully sparse at times and dense at other times.  I'm thinking
thick and thin lines (or whole and dashed) would help.  It wouldn't be hard
to add.  

> 2. The Font Syle:  With the feature of DIA, that only the whole text can get
> a style its a not easy to design a diagram. Because without point 1 the
> positioning of the other(s) lines is very difficult.

As was mentioned before, you can set the grid line size explicitly.  More
complex text style would be a fair amount of work, I think.

> 3. If i draw a diagram, first i draw the objects and than the lines and
> arrows. And there is a missed feature for me in DIA. I must define for every
> line all the arrows. There is no automatism. Ok i can copy an existing line.
> The same problem is when i draw an object. imho find the visio solution
> better, I must explicit change the object. But ok. What i mean is, the
> program is not round at the moment, to much must i do manually. Its all
> logical, but imho like the visio style.

If I understand you correctly, you want to have the lines have arrows on
them when you create them.  Look at the bottom of the toolbox, there's a
line in three parts.  The middle part determines the stippling for new
lines, while the left and right determine start and end arrows for new
lines.  I think that's what you want.  Any idea how it could be made more
obvious? 

-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?