Re: Defining Shapes - Error Message about "Several Object Types"

[David Powell <davidjp uqconnect net>]

On Sun, 18 May 2003 03:55 am, Alan Horkan wrote:
> On Sat, 17 May 2003, David Powell wrote:
> > When I use "sheets and objects" to load my new shapes I get an error
> > message for each one that says:
> >
> > ***Error***
> > Several Object types were named shapes - 'shape-name'.
> > Only the first one will be used
> > Some things might not work as expected
> > ***end Error***
> >
> > I can assure you that I only have one .shape file for each shape in the
>
> Shape name is defined inside the XML, <name></name> and they must be
> unique.

I looked at that, and as far as I could tell, the names I had given them were 
unique.  Does the sheets & objects tool copy the shapes to somewhere else as 
well as the location that I saved them in?  I added "ORM-" to my shape names 
to make sure they weren't clashing with others in other directories but was 
still getting the error message for each shape when Dia loaded.

The reason I ask about how the sheets & objects tool (s&ot) works is because I 
was able to fix the problem after changing the shape names after loading them 
using s&ot - previously every time I made a change to a shape I used s&ot to 
remove and then re-add it.

I hope that makes sense - at best I'm a dabbler in programming & database 
development, I know just enough to be dangerous :-), but not enough to make 
any sense sometimes!

Thanks for the help.

> What kind of shapes are you making anyway?  Why so myseterious?

I use Object Role Modelling (ORM - see http://www.orm.net) to plan & map 
databases rather than entity-relationship diagrams which I understand is more 
common.  I've previously used Kivio but found that I can't use this on 
Windows PCs, unlike Dia.  So I've just started building some of the basic 
shapes of ORM to see how well it works.

So far so good, however I've found that my shape definitions don't always come 
up in Dia how I expected (e.g. I can't seem to get the shapes the size I want 
- they are always bigger than expected).  This isn't a huge drama though and 
I think I'll keep using Dia as well as Kivio, depending on the situation.

Thanks again for the help