Hi Roland, On 08/27/2010 03:33 PM, Roland Stigge wrote: > needing to synchronize with external shape repositories when getting dia > files from "friends". > > I'm not suggesting that you get it from "friends". I hope to provide a service that makes it extremely easy for everyone to get those shapes from the Dia Shape Repository. > separate them from official dia shapes, e.g. "Other sheets" -> "Extra" > -> "..." > Given the amount of sheets available, this sounds like a good idea. Patches are welcome. > Further, I often read the opinion that by providing the open shape > interface, we empower users to create their own shapes. In practice, I > observe that only a very small percentage of users actually "draw" their > True. But that's a little bit of a hen and egg problem: Why should the ordinary user do this if there's no chance for him to distribute his shapes? I just try to look at who is able to create shapes - in my eyes virtually any Dia user - and try to encourage them. It's my vision to raise that percentage of users. Yes, we can. > own shapes - they are no vector graphics designers and won't even find > the diashapes installer themselves if I don't give them a hint. > True. But what keeps us from making Diashapes more prominent (or bundling it with Dia)? > Regarding the concern that additional shapes create package bloat: The > currently freely available sheets are ~120k, whereas dia is ~8900k, both > gzip compressed. That's only about 1.3 percent growth... :-) > True. But what's the number of shapes that made it into Dia during the lifetime of Diashapes compared to the number of shapes in the Dia shape repository. And once again: what about the quality/backwards compatibility issue? Once we've got things in the Dia package, they're "written in stone". Having them on a second level allows us to apply some finishing touches before we move them to Dia. It also allows us to see if things are really popular enough to shift them to the Dia package.
If you create a little shape and would like to share it, do you want to wait for next Dia release? Or keep nagging "where's the release, I want to share my shape"? Again: I'm not opposed to packaging and also not opposed to packaging more shapes into Dia. If you want to merge the shapes from the Dia Shape Repository straight away, go ahead. But please stand up if there are problems due to this decision. Regards, Steffen _______________________________________________ dia-list mailing list [email protected] http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/dia-list FAQ at http://live.gnome.org/Dia/Faq Main page at http://live.gnome.org/Dia
