0.96 usability

[Ian Darwin <ian darwinsys com>]

Your web page states:

> Try downloading Dia and tell us what you think of it. 

You did ask, so here goes:

Compared with any number of other graphics programs I have used over the 
years, there is some good functionality here but work needs to be 
invested in usability:

1) If you select an entire drawing, or even multiple objects, there is 
no (obvious) way to resize the composite object. All normal draw 
programs on all three platforms (*nix, OS X and Windoze) allow you to 
resize a composite using corner or edge drag handles.

[If there is some way that is hidden in your online documentation, that 
doesn't count, because a drawing program needs to be "intuitive" in the
sense of working like most other draw programs do.]

2) After changing the zoom, it is quite possible to get part of your 
drawing off the viewable page, and, neither the scroll bars nor any 
obvious gesture will bring it back. You can get it back by dragging the 
mouse off the page, but (a) that only helps if you know what direction, 
and (b) the View->Best Fit does not appear to work; a user of other 
programs would expect this to make the drawing fit the page. Or, there 
should be another View menu item "Fit to page" if that's not what this 
item is intended to do.

3) It drops core quite often, but I'm running it on 64-bit and on 
OpenBSD so this is probably the typical Linux programmers' lack of 
awareness of portability - if I find the cause and it's in your code 
rather than one of the many libraries used, I'll do a bug report.

Thanks for listening, and keep up the good work.

Ian Darwin
http://www.darwinsys.com/history/canthappen.html