How to Develop New Features

[Matthew Rubenstein <email mattruby com>]

        Howdy. I'd like to code some revisions to Dia, but I haven't figured
out how to get started, despite browsing around
https://live.gnome.org/Dia and googling various programming keywords
combined with "dia".

        I'd like to embed a library that would receive data as graph object
labels are edited, compute against them, and return a value would be
displayed in other graph object labels. Since it's an embedded library
this seems like a plugin project, but I haven't found any documentation
for APIs or otherwise for writing a Dia plugin.

        I'd also like to create a set of shapes that all work like the UML
"Large Package" shape: implementing parenting. I'd also like to be able
to toggle a parent between hiding and showing its children. If it works
out I'd like to also click a parent to zoom it to fill the app viewport,
then click a child that's itself a parent to zoom into it, and zoom back
out. I haven't seen any docs for creating a new shape set, or how to add
these dynamic behaviors to them.

        And I'd like to code the save/load code for a simple file format that
stores objects with these behaviors. That seems like probably an export
filter, but again I've found no docs to confirm it.