Re: Margins

[Michael Ross <michael e ross gmail com>]

I won't apologize for a program I have learned and like - even though habits developed elsewhere had to be unlearned, I decided not to ask for a refund and learned how to use what I could.

You cannot draw in the margins - where are they?  You can't see them, so how were you able to draw in them?

You can only draw on the adjacent sheet of a segmented plot. (Segmented means if you have a Dia on four pages, when you print it you will get four pages with whatever size margins you told it to use.  You can tape them together into a large plot if you like.)  If you draw across a page break line and print it out the margins will be clear of printing.  So if you don't want that to happen, then draw inside the page breaks, a simple paradigm.  If you do draw over the page breaks then you can scale and move things to get them back inside the breaks.

Dia is open source.  That means it is built by volunteers.  That means if you don't like the documentation, or want a new or different feature, you are welcome to change it yourself, or lobby politely for others to do that work for you.  

From observing how the "management" of Dia works, the things you want do not exist is because no one has made a sufficient case to get the change implemented.  So the program grows according to the inclinations of the most active participants.   Probably no one here cares that much about the way the other programs you mentioned work since Dia meets their needs.

Regarding the rulers, I think I asked the same question long ago and was told that the program was developed in centimeters and so there you have it.  Since 1 inch is close to 25mm, I just do the math on the fly.

On Thu, Jul 21, 2011 at 12:16 PM, Tech Support Department <tech frontrowcomputer com> wrote:

Actually, the user can most certainly draw outside the margins as well as the page borders.  That's the whole problem.

If on the other hand, one cannot draw outside margins, as was pointed out, because they don't exist on the canvas, that would be entirely different.  In that case, one might like to see such a simple sentence in the help section.  Maybe something like "It is impossible to draw outside margins because they do not exist on the canvas".  And maybe "Only page breaks are shown".  Of course that leaves the odd behavior of minus so many units of measure to the left and top.  That is where it is useless regardless of any of the rest of it.

The program cannot properly show "full page", zoom to margin width, zoom to page width or zoom to two page view, based upon the chosen page size and type.  Remember that one's ability to zoom in Dia is restricted by the viewer's expectations of what they are seeing on the canvas.  If the canvas has no relationship to standard practices, it remains counter-productive to the process.  One can possibly learn to work around it, but it isn't easy.

Also, I could find no directions on how to set the rulers to inches.  Most things I've read say that is not possible.

Further, what is a "segmented plot"?  I don't have a plotter, so does that help me on my printer?

The fact remains that Dia, although very useful, has a non-standard way of addressing pages.  It forces users into doing things in a manner different from thirty years of practice.

Thanks.

--

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That is demented." -- Charlie Munger of Berkshire Hathaway

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Michael E. Ross

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