Right-clicking for properties

[Aidan Fitzpatrick <aidan reincubate com>]

Hi all

I've been using Dia for some time but keep running up against a problem I see when changing object properties.

Namely, other technical drawing or DTP applications I use will, when you right click on an object, show you that object's properties.

In Dia, however, when you right-click on an object, you'll be shown the properties of the object you last left-clicked on.

For reference, applications that follow the first behaviour includeÂVisio, Office, Open Office, Inkscape, and Illustrator.

I opened a bug earlier in the year and had a very short back and forth with Hans, but I don't think I described the problem very well and Bugzilla isn't the place for discussion.

The bug was here:Âhttp://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=580740

An example:

In Dia (0.96.1 from Jaunty .deb, or 0.97, built from SVN):
Create two boxes. Left-click on the first to select it. If you right-click the
second box and choose properties, you're presented with the properties of the
first box.ÂThis is because the right-click isn't selecting the second box.

In Inkskape (0.46, Jaunty .deb):
Create two boxes.ÂIf you left-click select object 1, right click object 2 and choose "object
properties", you see the properties for object 2.

Why do I care about this?ÂSimply because if you want to change the properties of many objects, you need that extra left-click for each of them. It slows you down... and I have to keep retraining myself to use Dia after using other apps.

How do you guys perceive this?

Best,

A