Re: Diagrams within shapes

[Lars Clausen <lars raeder dk>]

On May 19, 2009, at 6:00 PM, Felipe Ignacio Cañas Sabat wrote:

> Hello all,
> First, congrats on Dia, it surely makes the world a better place :D  
> Now,
> about my question.
>
> Has it ever been considered (or is it possible now) to be able to
> ``encapsulate'' diagrams within shapes? What I mean is, for example,
> putting a whole state diagram within a state shape.
>
> The objective would be to have different levels of detail in a diagram
> without it showing all at once.
>
> Now, I understand that something similar could be achieved with  
> layers,
> but I find this way rather uncomfortable. It would require setting
> layers to visible/invisible, and doing things that don't belong to the
> diagram itself, but to the application. The idea is for this
> functionality to ``belong'' to the diagram, and be contained  
> completely
> inside it.

As I hear your suggestion, there's really two things to it: The  
ability to embed other diagrams within a diagram, and the ability to  
hide shapes that are within other shapes.

The latter has gotten some work done on it with the new grouping  
system that didn't make it into 0.97. In that, groups can be opened,  
closed or hidden, meaning their contents are editable, their contents  
are shown but fixed, and their contents are entirely hidden. However,  
there are a few issues of backwards compatibility and quirky use cases  
that didn't get the necessary love. I hipe somebody will pick up on it  
for 0.98, it's one of the few things in Dia that would *really* need  
to be fixed for a 1.0 release.

The former, embedding diagrams in other diagrams, has been mentioned  
several times, but nobody has sat down and done the necessary thinking  
about what it really means, for instance in terms of change propagation.

-Lars