Re: How many use the diagram tree?

[Lars Clausen <lrclause cs uiuc edu>]

On 7 Sep 2003, James K. Lowden wrote:
> On Mon, 11 Aug 2003, Alan Horkan <horkana maths tcd ie> wrote:
> > On Sun, 10 Aug 2003, James K. Lowden wrote:
> >
> > It is not just Visio it is just about every vector graphics program I
> > have seen.  I guess handles must have seemed simpler to program at some
> > point.  I guess the problem is the difference between wanting to
> > simpley move or change the shape, the handles make it clear that you
> > want to resize rather just select and move.
> > Certainly being able to join one line to anywhere on another line
> > or circumferance would be nice
>
> It's true I was talking about the connection points and I'm sorry for the
> confusion.  
>
> WRT handles per se, however, I note that no window manager uses handles
> to facilitate resizing, and I really think resizing a shape on a diagram
> is no different from resizing a window on a desktop.  In the WMs I know,
> except TWM, when I put my cursor along the boundary, it changes shape to
> show I'm about to resize the window.  That's feedback enough, and easier
> to use than handles.

WMs usually put decorations on their windows.  The decorations are
essentially handles.  If they steal a part of the window to do resizing, I
want no part of that WM.

> > > To clarify what I meant by "tabbed diagrams".  I've found that even
> > > for very complex diagrams, only a few named subsets were worth
> > > maintaining. Each one is a kind of sub-diagram, really another
> > > perspective on some of the objects.  Suppose each named subset would
> > > appear as a tab in the diagram's window, similar to the way tabs work
> > > in Mozilla.  I suggest this
> >
> > Mozilla tabs are showing multiple seperate documents, I was trying to
> > make the minor distinction of a document with multiple sheets/pages
> > making up a workbook each of which would be displayed in a seperate Tab,
> > like in Excel, PowerPoint, Visio, OpenOffice Draw etc.
>
> So we have two ideas: (a) "views" of subsets of the diagram, and (b)
> "related" (probably linked) diagrams.  
>
> I would say a drawing program is different from something that deals with
> text or pixels.  The notion of "a subset of objects" doesn't apply to
> browsers or spreadsheets or text editors.  I can only tell you that as
> the object count approaches 100, it becomes more and more
> useful/necessary to partition it, and the boundaries don't normally fall
> at the page breaks.  Tabs seem to me like a natural way to render named
> subsets.  Separate windows managing a single document strikes me a hard
> to use and to implement.

At this point I'd like to point out a thing I often do in Gimp:  Have two
views on the same diagram, one that I work on at 800% zoom, one to see the
results at 100% zoom.  If I can't see them both at the same time, it's
harder to see what I do.  Not the killer reason in Dia, but still worth
thinking about.  Some way to detach tabs perhaps?

As for views of subsets, there are layers.  They just need to be able to
interconnect.   Hmmm... don't really address the 'other perspective on some
objects' idea, but then no objects have anything like that yet.

> > It might also be possible to achieve what you want by having a object
> > say a Rectangle that you can click on and when you do so you are zoomed
> > in and get to see  the parts that make it up.  This is more a case of
> > better handling hiding details at distant Zoom levels.  I am not sure I
> > can explain this particularly well.
>
> Well, I think we've bandied this about before.  I hope one day we have an
> object that acts as a link to other diagrams, to support "drill-down" for
> such things as data flow diagrams.  It could also act as an "edge
> connector" to other diagrams managing related domains.  

AOL.

> But I think Zoom is an orthogonal notion.  The idea of revealing objects
> within objects by zooming in is appealing in a Star Trek kind of way, but
> I think it would be unwieldy in practice.  Better to restrict Zoom to
> magnification for the user's convenience.  

If anything, you could have a minimum size at which objects are displayed,
at least in interactive views.  That would speed up some operations, but
could be confusing.

-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?