Where I work, Di is very usable on both MS Windows and Linux.
We currently have only 2 significant usage issues:
1. No way to set default text properties. For text objects, the work-around
is easy. For objects with "text fields", like UML shapes, this is more work.
2. The UML Transition shape has a text field with no text properties. This
effectively makes diagrams non-portable between computers.
(Yes, I know, we could just label shapes using text objects and group text
with the shape, but this makes generating code from diagrams more complex.
Also, it introduces another source of potential errors.)
While we can live with those problems, they often require extra work when
someone edits another person's diagram.
(We do make fixes to most of the open source tools we use and have
attempted to make fixes to Dia. But our area of expertise is
electro-mechanical systems, not desktop computer applications and we have
very little time available to make more than simple fixes to the open
source tools we do use.)
Still, we are happy with Dia and hope it can be updated to Gtk3/Gtk4, and,
hopefully, continue to have a small resource footprint.
On Wed, Dec 5, 2018 at 12:39 PM wrote:
>
> From: Steve Litt
> Subject: What's wrong with Dia the way it is?
>
> What's wrong with Dia just the way it is? It works. It's exportable
> into Inkscape for conversion to SVG.
>
> Sure, I have a few qualms with the way Dia works, mainly having to do
> with the relationship between text and shapes, but perhaps some good
> workaround documentation would settle that. I'd love to have
> Visio-quality diagram components, and perhaps if somebody writes some
> docs on how to make your own components with the connection points
> *you* want, that will be solved. Plus the fact that if everyone
> authoring new components puts them together in an online hierarchical
> library, perhaps with keyword search, our diagrams could start to rival
> those of visio users.
>
> If some of the libraries used by Dia are in the process of being
> deprecated, then those certainly must be replaced by their successors.
> But other than that, why the emphasis on maintenance? Sometimes
> something's so good it needs no more maintenance (fetchmail is one
> example).
>
> Right now Dia works for people on all sorts of computers. It's very
> DIYable. My experience has been that in many cases, people in a hurry
> to "improve" software end up making it into a buggy, DIY-not-allowed
> monolithic entanglement.
>
> SteveT
>
> Steve Litt
> December 2018 featured book: Rapid Learning for the 21st Century
> http://www.troubleshooters.com/rl21
>
>
> --
>
> Message: 4
> Date: Wed, 5 Dec 2018 17:38:05 +
> From: Zander Brown
> To: discussions about usage and development of dia
>
> Subject: Re: Hello Everyone
> Message-ID:
> <
> lnxp265mb074554ac9ccf61b8f60489c5dc...@lnxp265mb0745.gbrp265.prod.outlook.com
> >
>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
>
> On Wed, 2018-12-05 at 12:16 -0500, Steve Litt wrote:
> > On Tue, 4 Dec 2018 22:24:58 +
> > Alexander Brown wrote:
> >
> > > Whilst I am a member of the GNOME Foundation and would like to see
> > > Dia
> > > modernised I recognise the fact Dia is very much a cross platform
> > > application and therefore has a sort of 'special status' within the
> > > GNOME Project and have no intention of breaking KDE/macOS/Windows
> > > compatibility
> >
> > And are you going to guarantee Dia's continued useability for those
> > of
> > us who run sans-systemd distros? This is an important question
> > because
> > Gnome itself no longer runs without systemd as its PID1 and early
> > boot
> > library.
>
> I find it highly unlikely that our main dependencies (Gtk, GLib) will
> ever become dependent on systemd and cannot foresee any reason at all
> for Dia to depend on systemd itself
>
> As I've stated I'm committed to maintaining support for macOS & Windows
> neither of which use systemd so yes I have every intention of
> supporting Dia on 'sans-systemd distros'
>
> Hopefully that resolves your concerns
>
> >
> > SteveT
> >
> > Steve Litt
> > December 2018 featured book: Rapid Learning for the 21st Century
> >
> https://eur01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.troubleshooters.com%2Frl21data=02%7C01%7C%7C07df255358994c7bab4808d65ad595dc%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435%7C1%7C0%7C636796270721383503sdata=d7tPMY61Avm7lyuBT5d0Gfqy1pLpQ6w%2BM0vGNE75s4Y%3Dreserved=0
> > ___
> > dia-list mailing list
> > dia-list@gnome.org
> >
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> > FAQ at
> >
>
