Re: How to change page size to selection size <SOLVED WITH WORKAROUND>

[Steve Litt <slitt troubleshooters com>]

On Sat, 13 Apr 2013 19:38:16 +0200
Hans Breuer <hans breuer org> wrote:

> At 11.04.2013 06:26, Steve Litt wrote:
> > On Wed, 10 Apr 2013 23:43:02 +0200
> > Hans Breuer<hans breuer org>  wrote:
> >
> > > At 10.04.2013 20:48, Steve Litt wrote:
> [...]
> > > > As you know, previous Dia versions had a "size to selection"
> > > > button for page size, but current versinos got rid of that
> > > > feature.[...]
> > >
> > > You said that before and apparently are not aware of my answer:
> > > https://mail.gnome.org/archives/dia-list/2013-February/msg00031.html
> > >
> > > It does not become more true by prefixing that statetment with "As
> > > you know". At least I am not aware of any "size to selection"
> > > button having been available in Dia in the last twelve years.
> > > Please be more specific what you did before - especially how - and
> > > what is not working anymore in which version.
> >
> >
> > I'll tell you what Hans,
> >
> > I'll go to the not inconsiderable trouble of:
> >
> > 1) Find a spare computer
> > 2) Find a copy of Ubuntu 10.04 or whatever
> > 3) Take a complete set of screenshots of the facility to size the
> > page to selection
> > 4) Make the screenshots available to the list
> >
> > I'll do all that if you promise to put back the functionality that
> > the screenshots reveal.
> The only thing I can promise it that I wont try to fix something that
> I dont understand.
> I have a lot of Dia versions readily available for testing, but I
> simply cant imaginge where you have seen the button you are talking
> about. Maybe you had a custom script or plug-in providing all the
> "facility to size the page to selection"?
> Also I'm not interested at all in screenshots, so please dont bother
> to create these. Especially not from something which was never part
> of an official Dia version. Screenshots wont help you to get the
> feature back. Finding the source of that feature might.

Whoops. I'm wrong. You're right. Sorry.

I had forgotten how I REALLY used dia back in the old days. I did
further research and found that this "size to selection" property was
in Inkscape, not dia. 

I used to export dia to svg and then resize the drawing in Inkscape
before converting to .pdf. In order that it size correctly, I'd put a
tiny translucent circle just upper left and lower right of the dia
drawing, in order that the finished .pdf's borders wouldn't touch the
lines of the drawing itself. Then I ran it through my dia2pdf script:

==============================
#!/bin/bash
dianame=$1
gname=`echo $dianame | sed -e "s/\..*$//"`
pdfname=$gname.pdf
echo Converting $dianame to $pdfname
inkscape --export-area-drawing --export-pdf=$pdfname $dianame
acroread $pdfname 
==============================

I'm sorry that my forgetting how I converted caused me to claim a lost
dia feature that never existed.

Thanks,

SteveT

Steve Litt                *  http://www.troubleshooters.com/
Troubleshooting Training  *  Human Performance