Re: Diagram or similar that shows all shapes?

[christian ridderstrom gmail com]

On Wed, 22 Nov 2006, Lars Clausen wrote:

> > A few comments:
>
> A few? :)

Guess I got carried away...

> > * Something that was quite annoying is that some shapes take up a much
> >   larger area than they appear to do on screen. Something that happened
> >   frequently was that I got one or two extra blank pages, simply
> >   because a shape extended invisibly to the next page.  The connection
> >   point is a good example of this. A very small thing on screen
> >   compared to the extent it has.
>
> Which shapes do this?

I'll try to create a list.

> > ** Maybe it'd be nice if there was an option to display the "extent" of
> >    all the shapes? (Or maybe the shapes should be changed to not have
> >    such large extents).
>
> There's a secret setting render_bounding_boxes (changeable in
> ~/.dia/persistence that turns such rendering on.

That'll come in handy when doing the list...

> > * In one case Dia reported a certain number of pages, but when printing
> >   to Adobe PDF I actually got more pages.
>
> There can be some issues when an object is on the edge, and the width of 
> a line may or may not get counted.  Did the PS file have more pages, 
> too?

I don't know... I used Adobe to generate the PDF directly.

> > * Is there some way to figure out what the keyboard shortcuts are for
> >   the different commands? (Assuming that commands without a shown
> >   keyboard shortcut actually has one).
>
> If they're not shown, they don't have one.

Some software show the keyboard shortcut for the command that was just 
executed in the status bar. I find that very convenient.
Btw, the tool tips for the icons don't show the keyboard shortcut for that 
icon/command. I suppose this all comes down to that the keyboard shortcuts 
are actually implemented through the menus?

> > Alternatively, is there a way to assign your own keyboard shortcuts?
>
> Yes, but it's turned off in GTK by default.  Apparently too many people
> set up shortcuts by accident and got confused.  I don't remember the way
> to set it offhand, but it's probably in gconf.

I'm mostly using it in Windows - I can look for an equivalent of course.

> > * I'd prefer being able to move objects around on screen using the
> >   keyboard in certain cases. (Other drawing software lets you do this
> >   using the arrow keys for instance. Is this possible in Dia?).
>
> Not yet.  It's been mentioned many times, and I did take a look at it
> once but didn't quite far and removed the initial crud from the code.
> It's a little tricky as long as text input is "always on" and also uses
> the arrow keys.  Once more, proper text input is a requirement for other
> features.

What if some other keyboard shortcuts are used? Alt-<arrow> perhaps?

> > Another option would be to have the code checking what pages that will 
> > be printed to be exectued when using the command 'Redraw'. (There 
> > should be a keyboard shortcut for that command btw).
>
> The redraw command should not be necessary, as in bug-free code it 
> should redraw appropriately automatically.  Greying out outside a 
> rectangular area would be doable when doing the page break lines anyway, 
> but greying out "corner" empty pages would be harder.

Just greying out outside the rectangular area is a good start I think.

/Christian

--
Christian Ridderström, +46-8-768 39 44               http://www.md.kth.se/~chr