Re: problem with custom shape

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

On Nov 8, 2007 2:36 PM, Lars Clausen <lars raeder dk> wrote:

On Thu, 2007-11-08 at 14:00 -0500, Michael Ross wrote:
>
> Let me get this straight, if I make a shape 1 inch by 1 inch it will
> come off the palette 2cm x 2cm?  If I make it within a 2cm x 2cm
> frame, it will look the way I drew it when pulled from the pallette?

Yes.  It always scales to 2x2 cm, you can always scale it back.

> Are you sure you were supposed to let that little secret out?

Oh, that's not a secret.  If you look into the shapes that come with
Dia, you'll notice that the coordinates vary a lot.

Yes, I did notice that (it has been a couple years now), and it contributed to an impression that shape construction was irrational.  I thought the coordinates meant I was supposed to try and use coordinates while editing the shape file itself to create a shape.  I was doing that because converting them from within Dia cause craziness in the size of the shape.

Until now I have wondered how anyone could tolerate the effort of editing shape files to make these nice palettes we see now.

My one experience with shape creation I made an LED symbol with little light rays emanating, and when I actually used the new shape is was bigger than the page size I had set. (I guess the page was smaller than 2 x 2 cm by virtue of some scaling mistake.)  I had no way to make sense of that, there was no documentation, and the forum didn't cough up this little 2 x 2 tidbit; finally, I had to quit screwing around and never made another shape again.  

I've said it many times the creation of shapes is the main point of differentiation with Visio (besides cost), that shape creation was too awful to be useful, but that it would be the very best improvement to the program.  You all may have wondered what my problem was, but I could not make a practical shape without this small bit of information.


Mike

Back when shapes
were created by hand, it was useful to be able to use an arbitrary
coordinate system to keep track of your drawing.  Now that shapes are
mostly made in Dia or Inkscape or with other tools, it may be an idea to
add an option to respect the size.

-Lars

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Michael Ross
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