Dia on Windows (0.96.1) old build. Issues may be fixed ?

["Kerry, Richard" <richard kerry siemens com>]

 

I've recently installed Dia, having seen a diagram in the Bugzilla documentation similar to what I wanted to do.

I seem to have found a handful of problems, some of them are issues where the help-file doesn't appear to be correct.  I don't know whether I'm misunderstanding something or the help is not the correct build for the program.

 

1.

I'd like to change a drawing from compressed to uncompressed XML.  The default is compressed but I want to version control my document so prefer it to be uncompressed xml.  I needed to do this by saving with a new name, renaming, deleting to get this to happen.  Should I have been able to do this just by clearing the "Compress saved files" option and resaving ?

2.

Right-click on the canvas.  Nothing happens.  The manual says do this to get Select Connected/Transitive Objects menu to appear but it doesn't.  That's only available from the Select menu.

3.

When I open existing diagram file, I prefer canvas to be same size it was for last edit, .

3a.  Subsidiary windows (layers, diagram tree) open very small first time.  Though on a subsequent run they do pick up the size they were before.

4.

Can't change a line to a PolyLine.  I've drawn my diagram with Lines.  On occasions I've found that I want to route one around another item.  In this case I've needed to create a new PolyLine for this.  Would it be possible to remove the distinction, at least internally, and allow corners to be added to Lines.

5.

Editing Text.  The Delete key deletes the object not the character and is thus different from most other Windows programs.  Also ctrl+arrow doesn't jump by word.  I've seen an entry in the Archives indicating that some change have recently been done in this area and also a discussion about a new Installer build, the first since 2007; hopefully this will come soon.

6.

Can I render to png (say) from the command line ?  Yes I can.

Actually the Help files say nothing specifically about the command line except for a handful of references in passing.  I have found that dia --help has a bit more to say but it should be in the manual somewhere.  And not even -?, --help was mentioned in the current manual.

7.

From a plain install I always get a Warning dialog at startup - "Several object types were named Cisco - CDDI-FDDI" etc.  Surely this shouldn't be giving warnings without my having done anything ?

8.

The File menu on a canvas includes Open but doesn't include recently used items but the one on the toolbox does.

 

I suspect several of these are due to the very old Windows build so I hope a new build will be available soon.

Apologies if all these have been addressed recently - I look forward to trying a new build but if there isn't one soon I may move to a different package.

 

 

 

Richard Kerry
Colledia Control Engineer
Siemens IT Solutions and Services Ltd
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Email: richard kerry siemens com
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