Re: object parenting?

[Alan Horkan <horkana maths tcd ie>]

On Mon, 9 Jun 2003, James K. Lowden wrote:

> > > That is creating objects that are not children of the diagram, but
> > > children of another object.
> >
> > The Group "object" does that at the moment.  The reason I quote it is
> > that it's not really a full-grown object, but more of a hack -- there
> > are IIRC little special cases for it scattered around the code.  It also
> > adds some problems with iterating over objects -- e.g. should 'Select
> > Same Type' select objects inside other objects?
>
> IMHO the simplest and most general solution for this is for objects to
> support URLs or the XML equivalent.  That way, diagrams and objects don't

xlink
http://www.w3.org/TR/xlink/

I really should add it and Dublin Core into the DTD sooner rather than
later.

> I don't know how to do it, but I hope that one day there will be a Mozilla
> plugin version of Dia, something that will let Dia diagrams become

There was Dia as a bonobo component for a while, and if you might be able
to get it to work with Plugger http://fredrik.hubbe.net/plugger.html

MozPlugger seems to think Plugger has been abandoned so you might want to
check it out as it seems to have some improvements over Plugger 4
http://mozplugger.mozdev.org/


I am still hung up on the idea of making Dia Shape files SVG with embedded
Dia rather than Dia with embedded SVG.  That way any ordinary SVG program
should recognise and display a reasonable interpretation of it.

On top of that an option to save a .dia file with the necessary shapes
inlined would be great.

I suppose as a more sensible and practical approach I should look at
improving the SVG exporter and optionally including some extra information
(such as connection points) that might allow more information to be
preserved when reimporting a document.

So many plans so little time so little skill ... ho hum

Later

Alan