Re: moving lines with shapes

[Aaron Trevena <tj love warhead org uk>]

On Tue, 22 May 2001, Andre Kloss wrote:
> Do you presume that lines _must_ connect to the chosen connection
> point? If you have a look at argoUML (http://www.argoUML.org), you can
> see, how this _could_ work. ArgoUML is just for Java coders, so don't
> expect wonders, but the obvious solution to the problem is this:
>
> >   +----------+
> >   |          |
> >   |          X<------------------+
> >   |          |           +-------x-------+
> >   +----------+           |               |
> >                          |               |
> >                          +---------------+
> Do the classes have 8 connection points? Or am I mistaken?

yes - I was giving a simple case. It would be kind of nice if connections
moved around following the other shape, but I guess that would open a
whole new can of worms, ie following what the user means rather than what
he does - not doing microsoft style 'smart' where you spend as much time
un-fixing things as you do doing stuff in the first place.

simple bounding box rules would have several advantages
- simple, well relatively, which means quick.
- DIWM (Do What I mean) ie, if as in lars' example the the user chooses to
have two shapes connected with the top of one higher than the base of the
other. then that is fine - the user chose to put teh shapes that way and
probably have their reason. (space, aesthetics, general strangeness (never
underestimate how strange people are :) )
- I could code most of the logic. (and I could then most anybody who can
code can).
- it does the job without being fussy or second guessing the user.

as Lars says it should be optional, but other than being able to turn it
off/on (like say snap to grid or whatever) I don't see any good reason for
not adding the feature - I think a great many people who would otherwise
use dia are using other software instead because of small usability
details like that - for example in an interview yesterday, while I briefly
discussed my autodia software he explained how he found it too much work
using Dia and switched to another application - written in Java.

My own personal reason for wanting it is that it would reduce the
time taken in the laying out of complex diagrams autogenerated by my
software, ie I lose a fair chunk of the time I saved by autogenerating and
laying out the shapes by having to move all the lines as I make the
diagram clear. a simple bounding box rule on lines would make diagram
creation far far easier and faster for relatively little cost in
development and speed.

A.