Perhaps you should try out Inkscape, http://www.inkscape.org/
It is a free, open-source interactive SVG editor. I know because I use it, and it's very intuitive. The way I see it, Dia, looks just like Sodipodi and GIMP, and it is awkward to use. Inkscape is a fork of Sodipodi but it boasts much more features and it is more consistent. Paul Balyoz wrote: > I have been looking for a good replacement for Visio for Windows, and > stumbled upon Dia. Dia looked very promising, but has way too many > bugs at this time. I don't have time to type them all into Bugzilla, > but I didn't want to move on without at least saying something to the > developers. Here are a few notes I made while using Dia during the > past 2 days. This is for the latest stable release, splash screen > says version 0.95-1. > > * font size defaults to humongous drawing size with teeny paper on the > screen, for the default of zoom=100%. The percent is totally wrong, > 285% is closer to 1:1 what you see on the screen, versus actual paper > size. > > * there aren't enough features when you ctrl-click or shift-click, or > combinations of those. Let me select multiple boxes to make a > properties-change to, by shift-click/ctrl-click. > > * CTRL-Y should do "again" operation. In other words, repeat the last > operation on the currently selected items. > i.e. when resizing font of a text area, I want to resize ALL of > them, one at a time, by selecting the next one and hitting ^Y. > > * Font size makes no sense: what is "0.80"? It's a giant font. 0.20 > is a teeny tiny font, about 1/10th the size of 0.80. > > * properties of an item need more features, like edit-box for the text > inside it (where you can range select or shift-drag the text). > > * Please enable printing of "only page 1", or "pages 2-3", that sort > of feature. It's disabled on Windows. > > * need icon binding for .dia files in windows (windows just uses the > generic unknown file type icon today). > > * holding ctrl, or shift, or alt and dragging the end of a line does > not snap it to its own vert/horiz alignment, or to any grid lines, > that I could see. > > * Dia opens in weird size window, regardless of size of diagram or > size of screen. If you resize it and quit, it doesn't save the window > size, so you get the weird size everytime you open the file. > > * You can't select text in an editable text area (standalone text, or > text in a box); therefore you cannot replace a word or sentence, you > have to > mouse around and backspace to erase a part and retype it. This > means you also can't copy text to another place. > > * No way to change font size/style for a portion of text - like, I > cannot make a box with a big-point bold word first, then smaller > italic words below it. > > * there's a bug where part of the text in a box is obviously one font > size and part is another, but there's no way to fix it. I think it's > screen bug only, printing the diagram resulted in all same size font > as expected. > > * selection-rectangle sometimes seems to select objects that it merely > touches (not completely engulfing); however, if "not enough" of the > object was touched, it is not selected. > I can't predict how much of an object to touch to make it select > the object every time. > > * Properties dialog: pressing ENTER does not dismiss the box by > clicking the OK button, even though OK is colored like it is the > default button. > > * No way to tell the flowchart square box that its inner text should > be vertical justified "top". It's always center-justified, vertically. > > * If you have dual windows such that your secondary screen is to the > side of your primary one but up "higher" 20 to 40 pixels, then Dia > opens its main window up too high so you can't see the top part of it, > and you can't drag it, get to any menus, or dismiss it! 90% of Dia's > functionality is now broken, from my point of view. > > * Default margins of 2+ inches on each side is way way too large; > should default to about .5 inches (1.2 cm) or so, for drawing > applications. > > I hope some/all of this was useful to the developers. I think Dia has > a good future, after these kinds of issues are resolved. I will > visit Dia again in another year or so. > > Keep up the good work. > > -- paul > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ > > _______________________________________________ > Dia-list mailing list > Dia-list@gnome.org > http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/dia-list > FAQ at http://www.gnome.org/projects/dia/faq.html > Main page at http://www.gnome.org/projects/dia > > _______________________________________________ Dia-list mailing list Dia-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/dia-list FAQ at http://www.gnome.org/projects/dia/faq.html Main page at http://www.gnome.org/projects/dia
