Fwd: [dia-installer - Open Discussion] General Feedback

["Steffen Macke" <sdteffen gmail com>]

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From: SourceForge.net <noreply sourceforge net>
Date: Jun 7, 2006 3:17 AM
Subject: [dia-installer - Open Discussion] General Feedback
To: sdteffen gmail com



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https://sourceforge.net/forum/message.php?msg_id=3765602
By: skelly33

As this is an "open discussion" forum, I presume that general feedback
is welcome.
I am a software engineer, avid Visio user (among other productivity tools) and
an advocate of FOSS solutions. I've meant to dig around for an OS flowcharting
application for quite some time, but only got around to it today and came across
this application.

I'm impressed with the level of work that has been done so far. The
core elements
of the application appear to function quite as I expect them to and there have
been no unexpected results or crashes, etc. As a Visio user it was easy for
me to identify the various things that I need to do and produce a
workable flowchart
in short order - my ramp-up time with Visio took much longer, but that was the
first diagramming application I'd ever used (back before Micro$oft snatched
it up).

So overall, kudos for the achievement thus far to the developers who have put
tireless effort into it.

I think I will continue to use this application and track changes in the future.
I hope to see improvements in some characteristics that make using the interface
either a little clunky, or more work than it should be to start.

1) Placing the ends of connectors sometimes feels like wrangling a high pressure
hose with a loose end - it just doesn't want to drop where I want it to without
a fight, particularly when trying to join the centers of two rectangles' edges.
Argh!

2) The default scales are ENORMOUS! In Visio, default object sizes are such
that you can place dozens of carefully oriented objects on a page
without scaling
anything. In this application, you can place three or four if you're lucky.
The font sizes are astronomical, etc. The application should assume a font size
no bigger than 8-12pt (based on a 72pt/inch scale), and objects that
would contain
perhaps two lines of text at the chosen size.

3) How about U.S. standard units of measure as an option in addition to metric?
American's aren't worldly enough think in metric :-)

4) Fonts render on the screen differently from the print - a realistic
representation
of the selected font is important so as not to waste paper with the discovery
that the text actualy -doesn't- fit within the bounding rectangle.
Using printouts
to guide changes to the on-screen document is more than a little aggravating,
especially when the entire layout needs to change to accommodate for the
adjustment.

5) I read in one of the other threads about resolving missing extreme edges
from JPG/PNG, etc. exports with a work-around, but I second the notion that
the export should be including the extremities without having to kludge the
diagram to make it export correctly - again, annoying a user with extra,
non-intuitive steps is not a solid approach to scoring deep market penetration.
:)

Anyway, I hope you find the feedback useful and if so I would enjoy providing
additional such input over time as I use the application more. So far so good
though - I got what I needed done today without having to requisition a copy
of Visio for our department! :)

- SK


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