dia: a wild and crazy enhancement/rewrite proposal
Hello, This is not really a formal proposal - its far too wild and crazy for that. I have been struggling with visio (who doesn't ?) and find dia much easier to use. However, even dia has some serious usability problems when compared to a tool I have used before: Edge Diagrammer from PaceStar. See http://www.pacestar.com/edge/index.html. It is proprietary and what's worse it is also Windoze-only with absolutely no plans to change (I know, I've asked). But from a usability point of view I think it is brilliant. This is a plea to dia developers: please look at Edge Diagrammer (there is a downloadable demo version free of charge) to see how the user interface to dia may be improved. I am very interested in any feedback. In particular, look at the way connectors work when diagram elements are moved around. I realise that changing dia to give it an Edge Diagrammer interface would most likely be a rewrite so that might rule it out, but still, please take a look. Regards, Andrew Marlow ___ This e-mail may contain confidential and/or privileged information. If you are not the intended recipient (or have received this e-mail in error) please notify the sender immediately and delete this e-mail. Any unauthorised copying, disclosure or distribution of the material in this e-mail is prohibited. Please refer to http://www.bnpparibas.co.uk/en/information/legal_information.asp?Code=ECAS-845C5H for additional disclosures. ___ dia-list mailing list dia-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/dia-list FAQ at http://live.gnome.org/Dia/Faq Main page at http://live.gnome.org/Dia
a standard for diagram document format
I am really pleased that at last we have ODF for officially defining an open format for documents. But I think we are still missing the equivalent for diagrams. I realise that dia produces output in a number of formats but none of these are any kind of standard for diagrams that I am aware of. If there was such a std then dia could be one program among several that implement the std. We would then see survival of the fitest. Suerly this would be a good thing. At the moment dia is just one open source diagraming tool among several (albeit, a good one). What plans are there to try to arrive at a std? Without one I do not see the dominance of Visio ever changing. Regards, Andrew Marlow http://www.andrewpetermarlow.co.uk Don't top-post http://www.catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/T/top-post.html Plain text mails only, please http://www.expita.com/nomime.html ___ Dia-list mailing list Dia-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/dia-list FAQ at http://live.gnome.org/Dia/Faq Main page at http://live.gnome.org/Dia
configure problem due to libpng dependency on zlib
Hi, I just tried to build dia 0.9.1 on Solaris 8 and found that configure fails because libpng refers to zlib routines but test programs that link with libpng do not also link with zlib. This manifests as can't find a definition of neither finite nor isinf (sic). The definitions are there, it's the link that's failed. Can some knowledgeable person please investigate? Regards, Andrew Marlow There is an emerald here the size of a plover's egg! ___ Dia-list mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/dia-list FAQ at http://www.lysator.liu.se/~alla/dia/faq.html Main page at http://www.lysator.liu.se/~alla/dia
Re: configure problem due to libpng dependency on zlib
[EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Le Tue, Jul 22, 2003, à 11:29:06AM +0100, Andrew Marlow a écrit: Yup, the linker on Solaris does not honour transitive dependencies. If libfoo is needed by libbar, then to link baz you can't get away with just providing -lbar like you can on Linux and *BSD. Hmmm... I can't do much right now; but basically you have to tell configure to also supply -lz when checking for libpng. Check the arguments for AC_CHECK_LIB() I found that it thought png was not there. I added the include dir for libpng to CPPFLAGS and that gets around the problem. However, it gave a warning that there was no libart and near the end of the build this is a fatal error, because render_libart.c fails to compile. Don't you think this means that a missing libart should be treated as fatal by configure? Regards, Andrew Marlow There is an emerald here the size of a plover's egg! ___ Dia-list mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/dia-list FAQ at http://www.lysator.liu.se/~alla/dia/faq.html Main page at http://www.lysator.liu.se/~alla/dia
Re: configure problem due to libpng dependency on zlib
[EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: it gave a warning that there was no libart and near the end of the build this is a fatal error, because render_libart.c fails to compile. Don't you think this means that a missing libart should be treated as fatal by configure? I should also mention that I got a fatal link error saaying that it could find the symbol FT_Get_BDF_Property. Any ideas? Shouldn't configure check for this as well? Regards, Andrew Marlow There is an emerald here the size of a plover's egg! ___ Dia-list mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/dia-list FAQ at http://www.lysator.liu.se/~alla/dia/faq.html Main page at http://www.lysator.liu.se/~alla/dia
Re: configure problem due to libpng dependency on zlib
[EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: On 22 Jul 2003, Cyrille Chepelov wrote: Le Tue, Jul 22, 2003, à 02:30:28PM +0100, Andrew Marlow a écrit: I should also mention that I got a fatal link error saaying that it could find the symbol FT_Get_BDF_Property. Any ideas? Shouldn't configure check for this as well? I guess it should (Lars?). Maybe you have a slightly too old freetype? Is this perhaps the lack of recursive linking again? What's the command when it tries to link? No, that's not the problem. The problem is that configure doesn't check that freetype2 is present. I didn't have freetype2 at all. Once I got it built and installed, dia built fine. Doesn't this mean that configure.in needs to be fixed? Regards, Andrew Marlow There is an emerald here the size of a plover's egg! ___ Dia-list mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/dia-list FAQ at http://www.lysator.liu.se/~alla/dia/faq.html Main page at http://www.lysator.liu.se/~alla/dia
Re: petal2dia?
[EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Hi, Is there a path for transitioning Rose models to dia/UML? IMO this is impossible. The petal file is closed-secret-proprietary and even if it could be reserve engineered the format is subject to change without notice. I would much rather that there was a suitable open standard then RatRose and Dia could both conform to it. Unfortunately I don't think that XMI is quite good enough yet. Other standards are currently being worked on. In the meantime XML seems the best way to go to me, since it would then be possible to write XSLT translators when a standard is finally agreed on. Regards, Andrew Marlow. ___ Dia-list mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/dia-list FAQ at http://www.lysator.liu.se/~alla/dia/faq.html Main page at http://www.lysator.liu.se/~alla/dia
Re: Dia shapes for chemistry
[EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Hmmn I have used chemtool, and it is great, but you can't draw circles which are important for showing delocalised electrons, e.g. benzene. Hence why I use dia. I'm suprised that this form is in such wide use. I thought that people tended to use the Kekule cyclohexatriene form even though we know the bonds are hybridized. $0.02. apm (apologies for being slightly OT...) ___ Dia-list mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/dia-list FAQ at http://www.lysator.liu.se/~alla/dia/faq.html Main page at http://www.lysator.liu.se/~alla/dia
Re: GCC 3.2 and numerous DIA code problems
[EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: On Wed, 04 Sep 2002, Andrew Marlow wrote: Now that I have fixed configure to build a set of Makefiles for dia with the GNU 3.2 compiler I find that the code is riddled with problems. I have fixed some of these but have a long way to go. Would anyone be interested in me completing these fixes or is this a known (and in hand) problem? This would be a wonderful thing to get fixed. Since Debian doesn't have gcc 3.2 yet, you'll be in a good position to kill these problems earlier. Besides, any problem that new versions of gcc show are probably also problems in other ports. But! You should look at the CVS versions rather than 0.90, oh dear. For various reasons I cannot use the CVS version so I will continue with the work based on 0.90. Whoever merges my changes may have a bit of a merge job on but hey, CVS is good at this. There are loads of files to change. I have just finished the lib directory but there is loads more to do. I hope to post it here when it is done as a compressed tarball but there is a limit to the size of articles that can be published to this group. If it looks like it wil blow the limit then I will put the archive on my web site and post a URL. Regards, Andrew Marlow. ___ Dia-list mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/dia-list
GCC 3.2 and numerous DIA code problems
Now that I have fixed configure to build a set of Makefiles for dia with the GNU 3.2 compiler I find that the code is riddled with problems. I have fixed some of these but have a long way to go. Would anyone be interested in me completing these fixes or is this a known (and in hand) problem? Regards, Andrew Marlow. ___ Dia-list mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/dia-list
