Re: Math shapes?

["Michael Ross" <michael e ross gmail com>]

I am sorry to hear you dismiss this idea.

I assume that Bob likes to imagine combining math text and diagram
entities.  I agree with him, this would be a very useful capability..
The only way I could combine equations with a diagram would be as
pictures.  Not so good.

I frequently use graphics to help sort out data I acquire.  I recently
imported a screen dump of some scope traces, the physical causes of
the traces is complex.  Using Dia bezier curves I superimposed other
"hand made" traces that represented potential causes of the traces and
hypothetical results of the data.  I was able to perform a very useful
thought experiment in this way.  No other tool made this intuitive
combination of real and imagined data possible.  Likewise, I could see
working with graphics and equations in Dia for other thought
experiments and to illustrate ideas using those elements.  In this way
Dia could be a tool for learning and teaching by the students and the
teacher.

There are some very expensive tools that, after a great learning
curve, allow one to do these same activities.  Not very practical for
basic schooling in math where time and money budgets are very slim (at
least in the US they are).

Finally, if there are a trouble spots with Dia they are brought
forward in just this sort of application: Handling of text is not
good, limited fonts, no equation capability, poor WYSIWYG, other
irritants (the delete key deletes the whole text block instead of the
next letter?).  Creation and management of shapes is difficult and
poorly documented.  Basic questions like how to get expected results
from the creation of symbols, how to make icons, how to locate, add
and delete connection points, how to develop the accompanying
properties dialogs, and so on are not answered for the non-programmer.

Came to Dia to be able to make my own stencil sets (read math symbols,
if you like, for me it was more electrical symbols).  Without
knowledge of SVG and programming skills there is no practical and time
conservative way to do this. My willingness to create symbols and  to
document symbol creation quickly died on the vine when I had face the
fact I can't even understand the SVG specification and have no time to
root out the necessary requisite knowledge.

I regularly use Dia for those things it does with simplicity and
grace, but I still lack what I really want: homemade stencils that are
simple to create and manage.

I will note to others still trying other open source digramming
solutions that Inkscape (at SourceForge.org) is interesting.  It is
too much like a photo editor, but the interface is better than others
of that ilk.  Inkscape has no stencil function at all, not even a
clunky one.  But it is better than DIa for doctoring images with
diagram entities.  It does transparency of picture elments very easily
which I found to be very useful.

IMO, Dia will hit the ground running when creation of stencils matures
and is well documented.  (That will be when M$ exposes stencil
creation, and cuts prices for Visio if Dia waits too long.)

Best regards,

Mike

On 11/11/06, Lars Clausen <lars raeder dk> wrote:
> On Fri, 2006-11-10 at 19:15 -0800, Bob Kaehms wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> > I just started playing with dia and am quite impressed. I'm teaching
> > high school math,
> > and would love to use it for creating worksheets and sample problems, etc.
> >
> > Is there a library of math symbols already created somewhere?  Thanks...
>
> Not that I've heard of, and it sounds to me like an imperfect tool for
> it.  I would use LaTeX for any kind of math, that's what it's made for.
>
> -Lars
>
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--
Michael Ross
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