Re: [UI] Sheets and Objects dialog

[demurgets free fr]

Quoting Steffen Macke <sdteffen gmail com>:

> Hi Stef,
>
> Please excuse, if the moderaton takes some time. It's holiday season :-)
no pbm, I have a patch on hold so I do not want to work on it further because I
prefer thinking a bit on the overall picture. That's why I was eager to receive
comments on my thoughts :)

> I think that anyone who wants to do serious Dia developmemt should be
> on the mailing list. And the sheets and objects dialogue is definitely
> serious.
right

> For use cases and requirements: Have you checked the mailing list
> archives and Bugzilla already? If you have problems locating things,
> let us know.
I've looked through the wiki, mailing archives and b.g.o without any success
yet. Maybe I missed a mailing-list post?

> Custom sheets do not require any new sheets, they could be simply a
> new combination of existing shapes. Dia already ships an extensive
> library of shapes, but users might want to combine exactly those
> shapes that they need. Think of the Cisco and networking shapes:
> Usually you'll use a selection across several sheets.
> Exchanging sheets is already possible: Simply copy the sheet file to
> your ~/.dia/sheets folder.
ok, that's what I thought, so I suppose what you describe is encompassed by my
use cases.

> If that's too complicated for your users, I would suggest that you
> have a look at the diashapes tool and the Dia Shape Repository:
> http://dia-installer.de/shapes.html
I'm *am* the user already :)

To make it short, I think it would be more useful for 99% of users to move to a
fast bookmarking system (like right click> Add to favorites with a "Custom"
sheet) instead of customizing system sheets. I think manipulating system sheets
is just not useful: what is the point of putting UML shapes in Network, really?

If this is interesting the main maintainer, then I'll finish/change my patch to
do so. Contributing to FOSS is expensive in terms of time when you're not a
student anymore, so I do not want to go further if this feature is not wanted at
all.

> I'm sorry I didn't answer all your questions - holiday season :-)
hey, it's summer, but still ... ;)

thanks for the support,

--Stef

> Regards,
> Steffen
>
>
> On 7/14/10, demurgets free fr <demurgets free fr> wrote:
> > hi,
> >
> > I subscribed to this list because I sent a complete mail on the 3td this
> > month
> > and it still not have been moderated.
> > I'd like to make a couple of UI enhancements to Dia, and before that,
> remove
> > the
> > use of deprecated Gtk widgets.
> >
> > I started with GtkComboBox and took quite some time to port the Sheets and
> > Objects dialog located in the File menu.
> > I stopped halfway to just think if the dialog could be improved first.
> >
> > So, first things first, I'd like to know the use cases of this dialog:
> >     - is it useful to customize system sheets? maybe to reduce the number of
> > shapes?
> >     - is this to add personal items to them? because the problem is you can
> add
> > UML
> > shapes to Network for instance, which just defeats the purpose of the
> > classification
> >     - adding new type of sheets? but how to remove them?
> >
> > This involves a lot of code, including a startup warning dialog if the
> > system
> > sheet is newer and if you want to overwrite your local customizations.
> > I'd like to improbe the UI in light of removing deprecated widgets.
> >
> > So the use cases seem to be:
> >     - creating custom sheets
> >     - customizing system sheets
> >     - adding/removing custom shapes
> >
> > If I'm not mistaken, customizing system sheets should be ruled-out, even if
> > they
> > are a lot of items.
> > Creating custom sheets is nice, but you need to write shape files.
> >
> > Wouldn't it make it simpler to have:
> >     - some sort of bookmarks (a la Firefox) lying in this dialog first *and*
> > accessible from a popup in the palette directly to quickly bookmark an item
> >     - the bookmarks go in a unique "Custom" sheet (ideally always visible)
> >     - when you have 1+ bookmark, you automatically get this "Custom" sheet
> >
> > Anyway what's the point of creating your own sheets if you need .shape
> > files?
> > That means you'll need to edit XML at some point.
> > If users want to create sheets, they can edit them using XML, the DTD is
> > simple.
> > For exchanging sheets, maybe it would be better
> > to propose an option to import a sheet you got from the Internet for
> > instance.
> >
> > flames, suggestions, what are your opinion on that?
> >
> > --Stef
> > _______________________________________________
> > dia-list mailing list
> > dia-list gnome org
> > http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/dia-list
> > FAQ at http://live.gnome.org/Dia/Faq
> > Main page at http://live.gnome.org/Dia
>
> --
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