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Re: questions/experiences after a night spent with Dia 0.94 (WinXP)

On Mon, 2005-11-21 at 03:11 +0000, Mischa Oliver Altmann wrote:

Good Morning,

after stumbling across Dia while looking for open source or free flowchart  
software via Google[1], I spent last night producing a rather large  
flowchart with several layers, plenty of beziers and zigzaglines.

Here's my first impression including unexpected quirks i experienced with  
it. I think this might be useful for developers as I've never used Visio  
et al so I come in without expectations derived from established packages.

Overall, despite the following load of *constructive* criticism, I am  
quite pleased with the result and ease of use. Please keep this in mind  
while reading on ;-)


Thank you!  The very fact that you can get into it enough to point out
so many things so soon is a good sign.


Installation (V0.94, WinXP using http://dia-installer.sourceforge.net, AMD  
1.8GHz)
- download & installation was easy & smooth.
- later i realised that certain button images are missing (e.g. snap to
   grid toggle, all in layer tool box) they show up as white pages with
   red x. Any ideas?


That is a Windows installation issue, which has a bug report on it.


- updating of screen is sometimes slow/stuck especially when using
   layers. View > Redraw resolves this most of the time. I cant
   necessarily reproduce this. Hints appreciated...


I believe there is a bug report on this happening on Windows.


First impression
- The interface is quite intuitive. I didn't read the manual
   until I got stuck on more elaborate things (e.g. layers)
- why do most shapes have connection points but some dont?
   (e.g. the most basic shapes in "assorted" do not)


Which ones of Asserted don't?


- keyboard defaults such as <esc> for cancel and <return> for
   OK are ofte unavailable in dialogs.
   ex: properties of "seven point star"
   - <enter> is close, <esc> is unassigned
   - after changing a property
     <enter> can be either a 1) toogle of the property,
     2) close, 3) ok, or 4) unassigned
   - using <tab> or cursor keys also shows some inconsitant
     behaviour
   - when first opened, the propterites dialog doesn't allow
     <tab> or cursor keys to be used for naviating at all


Yes, that is a consistency issue that ought to be easy to fix.


- <Alt+T> open the Tools menu but is also assigned to select
   the text tool


Oops.  Personally, I never got into the whole
keyboard-shortcuts-for-menus thing, so I tend to miss those things.
There's several other of those.  Could you file a bugreport on that?


- when using the text tool the first time i experience quite
   a lag (and lots of HDD activity) is this the pango engine
   loading? If yes, then i presume this is why loading a
   dia file takes a while...


That may well be.  It wouldn't be noticeable on Linux, since Pango would
already be loaded.


- What is menu "Input Methods" and why is it empty?


There's a bug leaving it empty when the menu bar is on instead of
right-mouse clicking.  It should allow you to select various input
methods for non-western languages, like Amharic, Inukitut, Thai etc.


creating flowchart
- this was my main aim, so i've spent more time on this than
   other functionality.
- how do i define keyboard shortcuts for shapes (should be
   unique within each set)?


No way to do that yet.


- text editing: i might be missing something here, but is it
   not possible to highlight (select) parts of a text to delete/
   copy it? <shift+left/right> and marking with mouse dont work
   (mouse moves entire shape+text)


Nope, not with the current kludge of a text edit system.  The plan is to
use the GtkEntry widget emplaced in the diagram (tests show it
possible), which will allow such.


- creating shapes with fixed sizes and/or adjusting several
   equal basic shapes to have same sizes (where possible, i.e.
   only if text size permits). This is achievable by "snap-to-
   grid" to some degree but quirky with shapes without horizontal
   /vertical edges e.g. trapezoid.


There's a bug report on that already, I believe.


- the aligning of elements generally works well. it would be
   useful to have these functions readily available (small buttons)
   and/or spacially (logically) placed
   ex: (problem: Center and Middle cant be distiungished)
    +---------------------+
    |        Top          |
    |Left   Center   Right|
    |       Bottom        |
    +---------------------+
    |adjaced | hor spread |
    |stacked | vert spread|
    +---------------------+


The menu can be detached, at least under Linux, which I will do on
occasion.  That helps enough that I consider this a very minor issue.


- already requested: dockable tools
- how do i join two two arrows: ie how do i get a connection point
   at the end of an arrow? This was discussed in
   http://mail.gnome.org/archives/dia-list/2005-November/msg00043.html
   but I dont understand what Lars meant.
     My suggestion would be to have a shape that is no more than
   a connection point (and if necessary a "dot" that blends in with
   attached shapes/lines). This sounds easy but I dont know how easy it
   is to implement.


Such a shape could indeed connect two lines, but it would be difficult
to select.


- how do i join an arrow to the somewhere on a zigzag, poly or
   bizier? I could create a mini-shape (but i cant move this
   minishape, as i would stretch it by click+drag)...
   ex:
       +--+--+          +--+--+
       +text1+---+      +text2+
       +--+--+   |      +--+--+
                 |         |       +--+--+
                 +---------+------>+text3+
                                   +--+--+


No way to do this, as they don't have connectionpoints on them.  Not an
easy issue, I'm afraid, but suggestions are welcome.


- Trapezoids aligned using "centered" produce angled connecting arrows:
       +--+--+          +---+-+
        +text1+          +text2+    note :
         +--+--+          +-+---+   the conn.points are not
            /      vs       |       at regular intervals in
           /                |       the "nicer" right example.
       +--+--+          +---+-+     Is this possible?
        +text1+          +text2+
         +--+--+          +-+---+
   This looks rather "unclean" -- I assume I could change the shape
   file but I haven't had time to look into such work. Ideas?


There is a bug report for this.  Both ways look a little funny in some
situations.  The upcoming mainpoint system should help.


- Beziers are immensly powerful. What exactly do symmetric/
   smooth/cusp control do? -- did I miss that in the documentation?


It determines how the control points behave.  By default (symmetric),
both control handles are equally far away in opposite directions.  In
smooth, they are still in opposite directions, but at variable distance.
In cusp, they can go anywhere, giving you a way to make sharp corners in
beziers.


- Documentation, in section Customisation talks about menu
   File->Preferences ? I first thought I don't have that menu then
   realised it meant the menu on the main toolbar rather than the
   currently opened file. Maybe this could be a bit clearer?


Indeed.


- the suggestions for a more functional "Diagram tree" as in
   http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=103987
   would be great. especially showing layers
- the suggestions for easier layer management as in
   http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=59105
   would be equally useful. this _could_ be combined with the
   diagram tree (above) -- but I'm too new to this project
   to understand how things inter-relate.


The diagram tree is semi-autogenerated code that I'm currently not going
to touch.


Other stuff
- file > save/open: could '.dia' be added as extension by default?
   could there be a file filter for .dia files in the file > open
   dialog?


The CVS version allows you to select 'supported formats' only.  Having
a .dia only or diagrams only may also be a good idea.

Adding default extensions correctly is tricky.


- Opera[2] supports SVG but opening a SVG exported
   from Dia results in huge text (and an error: "Warning: The svg
   root element has not opened the svg namespace.") -- I presume
   this is an Opera bug. any ideas?


Could as well be a Dia export bug, though I haven't seen other SVG
viewers complaining.


I'm sure there is more, but this is discouraginly long as it is. I hope  
you take my comments in a positive way:


Absolutely.  I'm not going to immediately react on much of it, but
there's good input there.  Filing bugzilla.gnome.org reports on the most
important things is the best way to not have me forget:)


 I think Dia is a very neat program  
and am happy to work with it. (Whether my work mates will allow me to use  
it is another thing...)


I wouldn't suggest trying to convince them with 0.94, it has a couple
scary bugs, especially on Windows.  I'm doing what I can to get a new
release out, focussing on bugs in what spare time I have.

-Lars

-- 
Lars Clausen (lars raeder dk, larsrc gmail com, http://lars.raeder.dk)
"I do not agree with a word that you say, but I will defend to the
 death your right to say it."
    --Evelyn Beatrice Hall paraphrasing Voltaire
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