Re: Issues & requests - basic connector/snap/grid issues

[Hans Breuer <hans breuer org>]

At 02.01.2011 05:46, dg1727 hushmail com wrote:
> 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?
Hardly. There is an important difference between Handle and 
ConnectionPoint. I think there also is a request in bugzilla to directly 
connect lines (your connectors).

> 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.
Intersting idea and probably not too hard to patch.

> Text objects should have the same kind of connection points that a
> rectangle has.
Are you talking of Handles (the green squares) or ConnectionPoints (the 
blue crosses)?

> 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).
From that description I think Dia already behaves this way for a long time.

> there should be a modifier (CTRL?) to disable snap so that a
> connector end can be put near, but not on, a connection point
I dont think so. Adding this option would also harm any automatism as 
requested one point above.

> it should be possible to flip connectors horizontally&  vertically
> (people sometimes need to use connectors as symbols)
But exchanging the "connectors" end point already is possible via the 
poroperties dialog.

> 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
I don't understand.

> 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.
There is a lot of room for improvments in Dia's cursor handling (e.g. for 
creating objects reflect that with a symbol of the to-be-created object).
Some kind of to-be-connected reflection would be nice, too. Patches accepted ;)

> Consider NOT selecting connectors by their bounding boxes (or at
> least having an option for this).
IMO especially the selection mode in Dia already has more than enough 
options, although this one would be really handy (but not as an option).
Currently the DiaObject interface does not allow the diffentiation of lines 
and elements - and thinking about it I'm not sure that would be the right 
split ...
> 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).
... because the same issue arises with a hollow box, i.e. a rectangle 
without fill.

> 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.
Could be possible by adding a dedicated function to the DiaObject 
interface, again: patechs accepted ;)

> snapping to grid should highlight which point on object is snapping
IMHO there is already too much highlighting going on

> Grid pitch (the distance between adjacent parallel lines) should be
> shown in status bar (because of File>  Preferences>  Grid Lines>
> "Dynamic grid resizing")
Wouldn't that information just be redundant with what the rulers are showing?

> option to force dynamically resized grid to be multiple of user-
> entered value
Please, no more options.

> 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.
ATM the dashing is pure renderer implementation detail. I think it is not 
possible to extract that information from the render backend, so this 
request would require to let the core do all the dashing. Which in itself 
does not look feasible either.

-------- Hans "at" Breuer "dot" Org -----------
Tell me what you need, and I'll tell you how to
get along without it.                -- Dilbert