Re: merging layers

[Alan Horkan <horkana maths tcd ie>]

On Sat, 5 Mar 2005, Lars Clausen wrote:

> Date: Sat, 5 Mar 2005 16:12:34 +0100 (CET)
> From: Lars Clausen <lars raeder dk>
> Reply-To: discussions about usage and development of dia
>     <dia-list gnome org>
> To: discussions about usage and development of dia <dia-list gnome org>
> Subject: Re: merging layers
>
> Robert sagde:
> > I think I may've went too crazy with layers on my first diagram.
> >
> > At the time I figured I could always Cut/Paste between layers so merging
> > layers would never be a big deal.
> > Now I find that cutting & pasteing severes connections (and it makes
> > perect sense that it does).
> >
> > I'd like to consolidate a few layers together.
> > Is there an easy way to do this?
> > Or, is there a mode to let you move & edit all objects from all layers
> > when making big changes?
>
> Alan's workaround of using an editor should indeed work.  Version 0.94
> also allows you to select which layersyou can connect to, but not which
> ones you can select in.  It would be easy to add a "merge layers" function
> to the layers dialog, I wouldn't mind seeing that.

I certainly wouldn't mind seeing it either, with the emphasis on seeing
it.  I think Dia has a lot of great functionality including Layers that
users perhaps are not making the most of because of how they are
presented.

I think this would force me to resurrect my attempts to add a Layer menu
and bring more of this functiality to the surface.  A Layer menu would
provide an ideal place to put "Merge Layers" and even more layer
functionality and also make it easier to assign keybindings to the Layer
funcationality without needing to do something crazy like hide away the
features in a context menu of a dialog.

There are other potential ways of approaching the general problem of
moving things around more easily like maybe enabling drag and drop from
the Diagram Tree, especially if the Diagram Tree represented Layers and
groups as branches of the tree (and I wanted an excuse to mention how
Adobe Photoshop has 'layer groups' which makes the Layers dialog look a
lot more like a tree view of the document).  Plenty of food for thought.

Sincerely

Alan Horkan

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