Re: Off List Posting

[Lars Clausen <lrclause cs uiuc edu>]

On 4 Sep 2003, David Richards wrote:
> Gentlemen-
> We are rolling out OpenOffice for our whole City in about 7 weeks,
> and part of that will be that I will be installing Dia as well to offer
> additional functionality.

That's very exciting!

I hope you are aware of the upcoming 0.92 release, some features of which
I'm sure your users would appreciate (especially the autorouting).  There's
still much that should be done, but this is very encouraging.

> There are two thing that would aid in the deployment, support and polish
> of Dia.
>
> 1) The dialog box that comes up when you print is tough for our users. 
> They are aren't good at putting in Linux commands, and just a basic
> "lpr" command will send it to the system default printer which is here
> in IT and not at their desk.  Integration with CUPS would be great, or a
> graphical interface for printer selection (such as in Gedit).

I can't set up a fancy thing right now (though CUPS integration might be
the way to go later on, it seems to be doing well).  What I can do is read
$PRINTER correctly, so if you can set environment variables for the users,
they should be able to print correctly.

> 2) The configuration screen should allow you to select your default save
> directory.  The users don't run it from the command line, so they can't
> put themselves into the directory they desire.  Some users will want to
> save to the local drive ($HOME), and others will want to use our NAS
> device.  A single line text widget with [Browse] button would be great. 
> All Dia files would then store in this directory.

An easy solution would be to remember the last directory saved to and use
that as your default save directory.  That'd remove the need for setting it
explicitly.  I can imagine users getting confused by both an explicit
setting and implicit remembering, but with implicit, at least there's one
less action to do.  Opinions are welcome.

> Thanks for consideration, it's really a nice program!

You have no idea how much it means to me to hear this right now.  You
really made my day.  Thanks!

And BTW:  It'd be a good idea to subscribe to the list, as we're catching a
lot of spam in the moderator filter, so it doesn't get checked very often.

-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?