Re: Maintaining / Helping out on Dia

[Thomas HARDING <tom thomas-harding name>]

Hi, all !

So,

Le 04/12/2018 à 11:21, Eduard Nicodei via dia-list a écrit :
> I don't think we need to argue.  Alejandro's comment however raises an 
> important issue: "what are Dia's competitors"?

> I think there will always be a need for an offline, open source, 
> portable lightweight diagram SW, so I think Dia still has a lot of 
> life left in it.  Also it is nice to see that it is still top-search 
> result for anything like "diagram open software", "diagram software 
> linux" even after so many years.

So, I think that's a good start point : why Dia, an unmaintained 
software, has *no* competitor /on its segment/ ?

=> Dia is a /tool/ : even if produced diagrams looks ugly, their means 
are what we want in *technical* diagrams (most are out from a 
standardisation, such as UML[partly implemented], electricity, 
automatic, and so on)

=> Its GUI is authored in a way any technicial guy/girl can start with 
it in a few minutes [KISS] (moreover, by default on an ISO A0 sheet).

=> there are multiple outputs (graphic formats) but not only, as you can 
even interface with code to process data. With UML diagrams you can even 
get code (DDL, Object structure, ...)

=> you can also feed data and get a draw (you could with, /here, xslt, 
but you can quickly rearrange, graphically).

=> works standalone

=> you can extend symbols collections / libraries of

That are the things to not broke (uncompleted list).

Obviously, Dia could _also_ work networked, in the future, or produce 
fancy views, MS-Visio like, when you need to impress commercials (we can 
imagine a toggle button "turn on fancy"), or at option use/produce other 
data structures such as Json.

But keep in scope to keep the tool simple, stupid and powerfull.


Regards,

Tsfh