Issues & requests - basic connector/snap/grid issues

[dg1727 hushmail com]

Hello, 

All of the following were noticed on Dia 0.97.1 on Vista SP2.  

In the following, "connector" means any of the 5 types of line 
objects in the standard toolbox:  line, arc, zigzag line, polyline, 
Bezierline

connection points of any 2 objects should snap to each other 
without a connector needing to be drawn

Can Dia be modified so that all connectors have connection points 
at their ends, in addition to any connection points that are 
present now?  

Moving a connector endpoint should move the endpoints of other 
connectors that are snapped to the endpoint being moved.  This 
would then require a modifier (SHIFT?) to separate the connector 
being moved from others that are snapped to it.

Text objects should have the same kind of connection points that a 
rectangle has.  

Moving one or more connectors should snap the connection points 
that are within the items being moved, to the connection points 
that are on the other items in the drawing (the items that are not 
being moved).

there should be a modifier (CTRL?) to disable snap so that a 
connector end can be put near, but not on, a connection point

it should be possible to flip connectors horizontally & vertically 
(people sometimes need to use connectors as symbols)

the moving of an object that has connectors snapped to it should 
snap when any of the connector segments (especially for line and 
polyline) that are snapped to that object are horizontal or vertical

when a connector tool is selected, the mouse pointer should change 
(to a plus sign?) when within the snap radius of any existing 
connection point.  This will let the user make sure that the 
connector that he or she is about to draw will start out snapped to 
an existing drawing object.  

Consider NOT selecting connectors by their bounding boxes (or at 
least having an option for this).  This is an issue when the user 
is doing a "select intersecting objects" drag (right-to-left 
rubberband rectangle).  Presently, since connectors are selected by 
their bounding boxes, it is easy to select, for example, a zigzag 
line that is a large U shape, without realizing that the zigzag 
line has been selected (if, e.g., the user draws the rubberband 
rectangle to select a small object in the center of the U).  The 
proposed feature might involve splitting each connector (for 
selection purposes) into sub-objects and using the extents of those 
sub-objects to determine whether each connector is included in the 
rubberband selection rectangle.  

snapping to grid should highlight which point on object is snapping

Grid pitch (the distance between adjacent parallel lines) should be 
shown in status bar (because of File > Preferences > Grid Lines > 
"Dynamic grid resizing")

option to force dynamically resized grid to be multiple of user-
entered value 

option to snap dashed lines so they always end in a dash, never a 
space.  This can be important to make it clear that the line 
connects to the object that it connects to.