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

[Lars Ræder Clausen <lars raeder dk>]

On Wed, 2009-02-04 at 14:03 +0000, Kerry, Richard wrote:
>  
> 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 ?

Yes.

> 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.

The manual is old enough that it doesn't know about the current default
style of menus, only the older Gimp-style menus.  You can toggle between
these in the preferences.

> 3.
> When I open existing diagram file, I prefer canvas to be same size it
> was for last edit, .

That is not yet stored in the save file, though there's a suggestion up
for it.  Also other edit-relevant settings (zoom level, position in
diagram etc) should be stored there.

> 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.

They probably open with the minimum size that fits their (few) elements.

> 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.

The thought has definitely crossed my mind, several times even. Problem
is that the Line object has a few extra features that would have to be
implemented on the PolyLine as well. Could be fun to integrate the
ZigZagLine, but that's more tricky.

> 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.

This is fixed in the 0.97 release, which Hans and compatriots are hard
at work at polishing off.

> 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.

That would be great to have added to the manual.  Could you do that?

> 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 ?

Fixed in 0.97.

> 8.
> The File menu on a canvas includes Open but doesn't include recently
> used items but the one on the toolbox does.

That is... kinda inconsistent.

> 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.

Yeah, it's been taking quite a while to get the new one out. I hope a
beta release comes along soon.

-Lars