Re: Dia grid snapping

[Michael Ross <michael e ross gmail com>]

Hi Dumitru,

Thank you for your very thoughtful message.  I am not a chosen representative of the Dia development team (though they have never told me to stop), my contribution such as it is, is to let new people know that someone is here, and listening; sometimes to offer simple help; and to tell a small story about open source when it seems useful.

You sound like a person who might be a good contributor to the development if Dia.  Please consider that, if you have programming skills.  

An interesting characteristic of open source software, that which is developed wholly as a volunteer effort, is that it's mostly just the way everyone that works on it likes it to be.  What you are asking for is probably something for which there are workarounds, or even efficient methods, once you learn the software well.   (For instance you are free to edit shapes to have connection points wherever you like them.)

If there are not workarounds and the idea has high merit, then it may be programming decisions were made early on that make the sort of features you mention difficult in some way. Or the changes were not even thought of in any software at the time Dia was begun (quite a bit more than a decade ago). Or possibly the suggested features simply do not rise to the level of need that developers require to make the changes; it would then fall upon you to make the case for these features.

Anything you can do to make your case easy to understand, including a defense of its importance to many people - especially those who already use and develop Dia.  Be prepared to have your idea rejected, that is how it goes sometimes.

An interesting thing about open source is there is no demand push for changes.  No one is trying to push Dia out to a new market, or to vastly increase the numbers of users (not that this would be bad).  It is pretty much word of mouth how folks know of Dia, and some people like it, others do not.   There is some demand pull for features, where people already involved or newly interested parties have the energy to do the work themselves - they have some emergent need that is served by the work.  But, really I can't explain the motivation of the others nor should I even try to.

There is a system for proposing enhancements and working with the others to change the software. And as always with open source, you are free to change it in any way you like for your own purposes.

FYI,  there are a number of other programs of great utility aside from and in conjunction with Dia.  If you don't already know of  them, take a look at Inkscape and GIMP.

Mike

On Sat, Jun 22, 2013 at 12:04 PM, Dumitru Ursu <dima ceata org> wrote:

Hello,
I'm doing some UML diagrams in Dia, and while I'm very satisfied with the program itself,
I've runned into some issues.
The thing is, it's very hard to draw "straight" diagrams. I use grid snapping, but the diagram looks like hell.
Then I disable grid snapping, and I can come pretty close to what I need, but it's far from perfect.
http://storage8.static.itmages.com/i/13/0622/h_1371917042_8552590_2c8f9d65f8.png

One more thing is very annoying: object snapping. It doesn't work as supposed, it's very tricky to make
an arrow to snap in the place I want.

Since I'm writing this email (I'm so tired, it took some effort), I want to give an an improvement advice.
I used for some time yed Graph. It's a very interesting program
with some drawbacks - it's not free (as in freedom) an will never be , I sent an email.
- it's written in java

What is good in it, is the way you draw lines (usually arrows) - you drag on one object - then on the second
one you stop, and it will find the best route (avoiding crossing other objects).
2'nd use-case - you drag on the object, you click anywhere on canvas and it makes a corner, click on the canvas as much as you like, making corners, and the click on the second object. The path is there, fast and on the route of your choise.
3'rd use-case - you drag on the object, then stop dragging while on the same object, and it will make a loop. (very useful in flowcharting)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ujMhxPJnJCw

It would be cool to have a feature like this in Dia. It makes you ultra-fast.
Thank you,

--
Dumitru Ursu
Director executiv, Fundația Ceata
Calea Călărași nr. 57, ap. 2, București
Secretariat: +40-761-810-100
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Michael E. Ross

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