Re: Dia: Why is it so hard to do simple things? dia-list Digest, Vol 89, Issue 7

[Michael Ross <michael e ross gmail com>]

On Sun, Sep 11, 2011 at 8:41 PM, Andrey Repin <anrdaemon freemail ru> wrote:

snip

You must be kidding.
Who on earth use keyboard for navigation these days?
Mouse wheel is all you really need.
Scroll is zoom, hold it down and you pan around.
The two problems with Dia in this regard are:
1. Dia moves zoom focus to the center of viewport on each zoom step, which has
the effect of zooming on the part of the diagram somewhere around the point
you started to zoom on, so that you either want to move your cursor to the
center of the screen after first zoom step, or pan viewport. THAT is a
terrible behavior I've mentioned earlier.

 

As a heavy CAD user I know all about  mouse zooming.  As a repetitive stress complainant I take issue with any system that puts the load on mousing for navigation and control.

 

You may think this is terrible (or am I missing humor), but to those of us that learned computing 20 or more years ago is keystroke shortcut use is normal and very effective - as long as you bother to learn it.  I have probably learned the systems for at least 50 different graphic or office programs.   Maybe this learning is a lost skill like handwriting.

2. Zooming requires Ctrl key to be held. Which is exceptionally annoying
combined with issue #1.

Exceptionally?  Oh my gosh.  How have I missed that?  

Seriously, I understand, but it's just like a conventional CAD program (Dia has more in common with CAD than the run of the mill office paint style program - I think the CAD methods are a fine model) with the exception that the roller zoom resolution is a lot finer in CAD.  Maybe if a roller button button didn't change by such a great factor we wouldn't get so far afield when roller zooming.  Guess we will have to learn Ctrl-E for now or learn to put the cursor of the zoom center.  I have never been to good at that, it isn't intuitive.   What is the alternative?  Only zoom using the screen center?  That would be very limiting.

 

> Maybe a few minutes investigating all the options can help.  I myself didn't
> know I could pan with the middle button alone until just now.

Unfortunatelly, I havent't found a way to reassign any keybinds under Windows.
Although manual referring to such ability.
In GIMP, it had to be explicitly enabled in configuration, after which I was
able to wrest it's behavior into my needs.

 

No argument there.  I have been bugging or dear Dia developers for years to give up control of the keystroke shortcuts. 

> Perhaps this complaint is due to a more modern habit of use?

Not really, just more efficient.

 

Left hand use is a great deal faster, than none; or forcing right hand keystrokes for high use combinations.  This is a great time to complain about the QWERTYUIOP system as well.

> Left hand key stroke shortcuts are a throw back to unix and DOS power user
> days -

I though that is more to the right-hand hotkeys, like copy/paste using Ins/Del.
Left-hand ones are more useful for when your right hand is busy with mouse.

Not for CAD or other graphic program users.  The left hand learns to cover the whole keyboard.

 

> Anyone that has some repetitive stress to deal with in their mouse hand
> knows what I am talking about, too.

Not anyone. Some people, unfortunately, straight decline to learn.

Don't make fun, my livelihood depends on my hands.  The only cure for RSS is less dependence on mousing (or whatever pointing device).  Nothing to do with learning.  Besides, I already learned Dia.  That is why I am defending, not kvetching.

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Michael E. Ross

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