Dia ChangeLog report for Tue Apr 23 07:23:02 2002 (UTC)
Snapshots available at http://www.crans.org/~chepelov/dia/snapshots *** Recent ChangeLog entries: --- ChangeLog.previous Fri Apr 19 09:23:24 2002 +++ dia-cvs-snapshot/ChangeLog Tue Apr 23 09:23:05 2002 @@ -1,3 +1,14 @@ +2002-04-23 Steffen Macke <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> + + * plug-ins/xfig/xfig-import.c: fixed text import + +2002-04-22 Lars Clausen > + + * app/export_png.c: Moved dialog functions to their own file. + * app/dialogs.[ch]: New files with standard functions for creating + small, transient dialogs (e.g. export options). + * app/Makefile.am: Added dialogs.[ch] + 2002-04-19 Steffen Macke <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> * shapes/Misc/folder.*: ___ Dia-list mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/dia-list
Re: Dia's user interface
At 16:43 21.04.02 -0500, Lars Clausen wrote: > >After reading http://www106.pair.com/rhp/free-software-ui.html> about >user interfaces in open-source software, I would like to hear if anybody >on the list knows something about user interfaces (more than just from >having used a bunch). If there are any, could you point out the worst >problems that Dia has in its interface? I'd like to turn some attention to >that as we work towards a 1.0 release. > The first place to look at should probably be: http://developer.gnome.org/projects/gup/articles/why_care/ It even has two screen shots of dia dialogs to show bad UI design, one of which I've modified before to increase useability :) Cause the useability people choose to use Dia as an example they would probably love to give more detailed hints how to improve Dia's useability :-) Though solving common toolkit problems - like tab ordering in dialogs - or shortcut changes should probably be delayed _after_ porting to Gtk+2.0 which will give us other useability improvements, 'inverted' No and Yes ordering and the like (almost) for free anyway ... Regards, Hans Hans "at" Breuer "dot" Org --- Tell me what you need, and I'll tell you how to get along without it.-- Dilbert ___ Dia-list mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/dia-list
status, UML fonts
Hello all As a newcomer to UML / dia, I've got a couple of questions (to start with:-)): 1) From the mail archive and snapshots @ http://www.crans.org/~chepelov/dia/snapshots/ it looks like dia is still being developed, maintained, but the last release is pretty old... Does it just mean the usual lack of time of the developer(s), or?... 2) When creating a UML class, the font, chosen by dia is VERY large (yes, it does first complain about fonts not found...), there was a message about these unfound fonts in the mail archive, but the suggested way to overcome this problem was not very straightforward (an additional package was proposed, also implicitely it was assumed, that xfs was running...), could someone, please, provide an update on this? 3) While building the latest CVS-snapshot, after re-running autoconf (configure was damaged), and installing libunicode from SuSE-7.3 (version 0.4), it still failed to link something in apps, so, I had to add -lunicode to UNICODE_LIBS = Thanks Guennadi - Guennadi Liakhovetski, Ph.D. DSA Daten- und Systemtechnik GmbH Pascalstr. 28 D-52076 Aachen Germany ___ Dia-list mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/dia-list
Re: status, UML fonts
> 2) When creating a UML class, the font, chosen by dia is VERY large (yes, > it does first complain about fonts not found...), there was a message > about these unfound fonts in the mail archive, but the suggested way to > overcome this problem was not very straightforward (an additional package > was proposed, also implicitely it was assumed, that xfs was running...), > could someone, please, provide an update on this? Great! Font-size is adjustable now! (latest CVS) Guennadi - Guennadi Liakhovetski, Ph.D. DSA Daten- und Systemtechnik GmbH Pascalstr. 28 D-52076 Aachen Germany ___ Dia-list mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/dia-list
RE: FAQ update
Although it seems to be GTK+ specific, the fact that you press the down arrow key to begin entering data on a dialog notebook page seems FAQ-worthy to me. A UI section was added to the FAQ recently. Rob Campbell ___ Dia-list mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/dia-list
Re: status, UML fonts
> > 2) When creating a UML class, the font, chosen by dia is VERY large (yes, > > it does first complain about fonts not found...), there was a message > > about these unfound fonts in the mail archive, but the suggested way to > > overcome this problem was not very straightforward (an additional package > > was proposed, also implicitely it was assumed, that xfs was running...), > > could someone, please, provide an update on this? > > Great! Font-size is adjustable now! (latest CVS) Ok, but the box for the class is far too wide - almost double the longest line, can that be changed? Also, would it be possible to wrap lines? Say, there might be functions / methods with lots of arguments... Thanks Guennadi - Guennadi Liakhovetski, Ph.D. DSA Daten- und Systemtechnik GmbH Pascalstr. 28 D-52076 Aachen Germany ___ Dia-list mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/dia-list
Re: status, UML fonts
On Tue, 23 Apr 2002 13:41:52 +0200 (CEST) Guennadi Liakhovetski <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Ok, but the box for the class is far too wide - almost double the longest > line, can that be changed? Also, would it be possible to wrap lines? Say, > there might be functions / methods with lots of arguments... Try to configure with '--enable-freetype'. There is a problem with resolving text sizes when they are not rendered trought freetype. BTW Dia with freetype looks marvelous :) -- Paweł Różański ___ Dia-list mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/dia-list
Re: status, UML fonts
> Try to configure with '--enable-freetype'. There is a problem with resolving > text sizes when they are not rendered trought freetype. Didn't change anything. How do I make sure freetype fonts are used? I'm not even thay are properly installe on my system (SySE-7.3). Thanks Guennadi - Guennadi Liakhovetski, Ph.D. DSA Daten- und Systemtechnik GmbH Pascalstr. 28 D-52076 Aachen Germany ___ Dia-list mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/dia-list
Re: Review of Keybindings [Re: Dia's user interface]
Adrien Beau wrote: > > As for your four operations, what about > > Ctrl+S, B (send to very back) > Ctrl+S, F (send to very front) > Ctrl+S, D (send down) > Ctrl+S, U (send up) > > I don't like "send" very much. Hmmm... In my original posting about this, I actually intended to suggest that maybe we should distinguish between "Send to back" (i.e. sent away from the viewer) versus "Bring to front" (it is brought toward us). This is at least comments I've got from other users -- particularly some addicted to the Unmentionable OS... "Lower" and "rise" could be alternatives, IMO. -+-Ben-+- ___ Dia-list mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/dia-list
Re: Review of Keybindings [Re: Dia's user interface]
Adrien Beau wrote:
>
> On Monday 22 April 2002 12:36, Lars Clausen wrote:
> >
> > AZERTY is evil. They require shift to do numbers. I hated
> > them the entire time I was in Rennes.
>
> Actually, putting ~#{}[]|`\^ and @ as "third class" symbols
> reachable only with the AltGr key is far worse in my opinion.
The Norwegian keyboard also has this "third class" mania... Some
priorities are very strange, for example the so important @ as AltGr-2,
while the ¤ (generic currency?) being at Shift-4. I never use the
latter, anyone know what it's used for? :-)
Commenting on the GTK behavior instead, though, I never was impressed
with this "auto-reassignment" feature... Inexperienced users might
easily just press that key-combo as they have opened the menu and they
see this shortcut for that selection "way down there on the list".
Instead of getting that selection, they have re-assigned the keybinding
of perhaps the topmost entry... Ugh!
By the way, I admit I find myself doing this sometimes as well, even
though I ought to know it isn't supposed to behave that way... I think
it's just an intuitive thing to do. (Same as being able to use the Del
key!!!)
So while it's nice to be able to "re-bind" the keys, I think the user
should really tell when this is supposed to happen. Just my thoughts...
:-)
-+-Ben-+-
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Re: opinions on Dia...
Nuno Afonso wrote: > > i have Dia 0.88 and the only thing that i consider not so good in the > sequence diagram (of UML) is the impossibility of doing 'ifs' (usually > when you do an 'if' it should create a block on the life line block... Is that the "self-delegation" thingy of UML you're referring to? I don't recall needing an 'if' in that situation... > another thing that is not completely fine is that a life line block only > has 3 places (on each side) to connect on it.. we should be able to set > the number of places to connect or it should increase the number of > places to connect when you make the life line block bigger, and decrease > when you shorten it... The middle-button menu (object menu) actually will let you add and remove pairs of extra connection points (one each side). But maybe it would be a great idea to have the connection points spaced at fixed intervals (related to grid perhaps?), so that they don't move when you expand the block. Instead, new connection points could automatically appear when the next "fixed interval" became inside the expanding lifeline box. -+-Ben-+- ___ Dia-list mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/dia-list
Re: Review of Keybindings [Re: Dia's user interface]
On Tuesday 23 April 2002 07:43, Ben Hetland wrote: > > The Norwegian keyboard also has this "third class" mania... > Some priorities are very strange, for example the so > important @ as AltGr-2, while the ¤ (generic currency?) being > at Shift-4. I never use the latter, anyone know what it's > used for? :-) Now, with an iso-8859-15 font, you have the Euro there, so it might become somewhat useful. Unless your OS is smart, and you still get the currency symbol there. Personnaly, I've never used it, and it's a third class symbol on French keyboards, so it doesn't matter. > Commenting on the GTK behavior instead, though, I never was > impressed with this "auto-reassignment" feature... I've known it for a long time, but never came to use it, mostly due to the fact that I don't use many GTK+ applications, and for those I use, the default shortcuts are ok. This changed with Dia, and I was delighted to be able to assign simple, one-key shortcuts for tools I was using a lot. B for box, T for text, L for line. I've used them a lot in the diagrams I've drawn so far. > (...) > > So while it's nice to be able to "re-bind" the keys, I think > the user should really tell when this is supposed to happen. I completely agree. This behaviour is unexpected, and it seems to be "destructive". Is there a way to cancel the shortcut assignment you just made? But if I understand correctly, this is more a GTK+ problem than a Dia problem? -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ Dia-list mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/dia-list
Re: Dia's user interface
On Sunday 21 April 2002 14:43, Lars Clausen wrote: > > If there are any, > could you point out the worst problems that Dia has in its > interface? I'd like to turn some attention to that as we > work towards a 1.0 release. It's a minor problem, but it seems to me that "Diagram modified!" is almost always displayed in the status bar. If I understand correctly, it is just a file modified indicator. First error with that: never ever shout at your users. No exclamation mark. Personnaly, in the few GUIs I've written, I've only used excl. marks in "impossible case" dialogs (where assertions would be better, but I don't use Java 1.4 yet). Always be calm and nice to your user. Especially when there are problems. Second error with that: it's way too big for its purpose. It's distracting to have this status message ever present. Why not do what Vim (and others probably) do? Put a * in the window title, as in "varicella.dia *", when the file is modified, remove it when the file is saved or undo operations bring the diagram back to the state that was saved (the latter one being not necessarily easy). -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ Dia-list mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/dia-list
Re: Review of Keybindings [Re: Dia's user interface]
> I completely agree. This behaviour is unexpected, and it > seems to be "destructive". Is there a way to cancel the > shortcut assignment you just made? In gtk while hovering over a menu item press any letter (or combination) tochange the keybinding, or Del to clear the keybinding Hope that is correct, i am on an old machine running some variety of KDE 1.x at the moment so i cannot check to be completely sure but i remember this fairly clearly. Sincerely Alan Horkan ___ Dia-list mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/dia-list
Re: Review of Keybindings [Re: Dia's user interface]
On Tuesday 23 April 2002 08:44, Alan Horkan wrote: > > > I completely agree. This behaviour is unexpected, and it > > seems to be "destructive". Is there a way to cancel the > > shortcut assignment you just made? > > In gtk while hovering over a menu item press any letter (or > combination) tochange the keybinding, or Del to clear the > keybinding Ah, Del! Forgot about it when I wrote the text you're quoting. That said, the basis of the complain remains: new users are very prone to assign shortcuts by mistake, and I don't think many will guess that the Del key will remove the shortcut they've just created. -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ Dia-list mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/dia-list
Re: Dia's user interface
On Tue, 23 Apr 2002, Adrien Beau wrote: > On Sunday 21 April 2002 14:43, Lars Clausen wrote: >> >> If there are any, >> could you point out the worst problems that Dia has in its >> interface? I'd like to turn some attention to that as we >> work towards a 1.0 release. > > It's a minor problem, but it seems to me that "Diagram modified!" > is almost always displayed in the status bar. If I understand > correctly, it is just a file modified indicator. > > First error with that: never ever shout at your users. No > exclamation mark. Personnaly, in the few GUIs I've written, > I've only used excl. marks in "impossible case" dialogs > (where assertions would be better, but I don't use Java 1.4 > yet). Always be calm and nice to your user. Especially when > there are problems. > > Second error with that: it's way too big for its purpose. > It's distracting to have this status message ever present. > Why not do what Vim (and others probably) do? Put a * in > the window title, as in "varicella.dia *", when the file > is modified, remove it when the file is saved or undo > operations bring the diagram back to the state that was > saved (the latter one being not necessarily easy). I agree with you on this. I have considered removing the !, but I never thought of removing the whole string. Three randomly sampled GTK programs (Sodipodi, Gnumeric and Gnucash) don't have any indication of modification at all. Gedit has "(modified)" in the window title, whereas Gimp prepends a *. I think we should go with the *. Since we warn before closing a modified diagram anyway, the information is not that important. Now's the question: Is there some more relevant information to put there? Currently selected tool? Number of objects selected (after a select operation)? Something? -Lars -- Lars Clausen (http://shasta.cs.uiuc.edu/~lrclause)| Hårdgrim of Numenor "I do not agree with a word that you say, but I | will defend to the death your right to say it." | Where are we going, and --Evelyn Beatrice Hall paraphrasing Voltaire | what's with the handbasket? ___ Dia-list mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/dia-list
Re: Dia's user interface
> Now's the question: Is there some more relevant > information to put there? > Currently selected tool? Number of objects selected > (after a select operation)? Something? Visio would be a good place to look for inspiration. I don't have Visio, but I happen to be using a free (as in beer) CAD program, IntelliCAD, right now. It uses this space to display the state of Grid, Snap, and other settings. Double clicking toggles on/off states and brings up a dialog for layer, etc. This would be useful functionality in Dia. Rob Campbell [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ Dia-list mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/dia-list
Re: Dia's user interface
On Tuesday 23 April 2002 10:11, Lars Clausen wrote:
>
> I agree with you on this. I have considered removing the !,
I've read the Interface Hall of Shame, as pointed to by
Alan Horkan (http://www.iarchitect.com/shame.htm), and
this is one of the things you can learn on this big page.
> (...)
>
> whereas Gimp prepends a *. I think we should go with the *.
> Since we warn before closing a modified diagram anyway, the
> information is not that important.
I've also seen the '*' used in Windows programs. It's a sort
of "minor standard".
> Now's the question: Is there some more relevant information
> to put there? Currently selected tool? Number of objects
> selected (after a select operation)? Something?
The currently selected tool is indicated in the toolbox, so
there no point in duplicating the information. I don't know
if anybody is interested in the number of objects selected;
I'm not. I usually use this area to report error messages
that don't deserve a window popup, which is the case most
of the times ("The blabla field is not a number." in red
ink in the status bar has proved to be enough).
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Re: Dia's user interface
On Tue, 23 Apr 2002, Adrien Beau wrote:
> On Tuesday 23 April 2002 10:11, Lars Clausen wrote:
>>
>> I agree with you on this. I have considered removing the !,
>
> I've read the Interface Hall of Shame, as pointed to by
> Alan Horkan (http://www.iarchitect.com/shame.htm), and
> this is one of the things you can learn on this big page.
>
>> (...)
>>
>> whereas Gimp prepends a *. I think we should go with the *.
>> Since we warn before closing a modified diagram anyway, the
>> information is not that important.
>
> I've also seen the '*' used in Windows programs. It's a sort
> of "minor standard".
Good. Let's do that, then.
>> Now's the question: Is there some more relevant information
>> to put there? Currently selected tool? Number of objects
>> selected (after a select operation)? Something?
>
> The currently selected tool is indicated in the toolbox, so
> there no point in duplicating the information.
This is not quite true: If you select a tool from one sheet, then change
to another, the indication is wrong.
Actually, I'm thinking if anything, the selected tool should be indicated
by the pointer. The non-object tools already do this, and we could have a
ghostly icon next to the pointer when another tool is selected.
> I don't know if anybody is interested in the number of objects selected;
> I'm not.
If you have a large diagram and select things by kind, connection or the
like, you may be. Note how many file managers will display the number of
items selected.
> I usually use this area to report error messages
> that don't deserve a window popup, which is the case most
> of the times ("The blabla field is not a number." in red
> ink in the status bar has proved to be enough).
That's a possibility, though how often does that happen? And if it happens
inside a dialog, shouldn't it be shown inside the dialog?
-Lars
--
Lars Clausen (http://shasta.cs.uiuc.edu/~lrclause)| Hårdgrim of Numenor
"I do not agree with a word that you say, but I |
will defend to the death your right to say it." | Where are we going, and
--Evelyn Beatrice Hall paraphrasing Voltaire | what's with the handbasket?
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Re: Review of Keybindings [Re: Dia's user interface]
> is Search/Find really a function that Dia is likely to add at a later > state? If Dia gets good at managing 100+ objects, find-by-name will become necessary. Lars, FWIW, please add one No vote on the start-up hints. Thanks to you, I read Joel's book tonight, which doesn't contain anything earthshaking, but is funny and pithy. One of his themes is that users want to *do* something, and software that interrupts the doing to spout off about the how-to-do is just in the way. (His critique of the Windows help file(s) sizing dialog is wonderful.) When I start a program, the last thing I want is hints about how to do something I'm not thinking about. It's self-important. I want to open my file or plop a few shapes onto a new one, thanks. If I want to read the docs, I'll do that. If I have to read the docs, the UI failed. Regards, --jkl ___ Dia-list mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/dia-list
Re: Review of Keybindings [Re: Dia's user interface]
On Tue, 23 Apr 2002, James K. Lowden wrote: >> is Search/Find really a function that Dia is likely to add at a later >> state? > > If Dia gets good at managing 100+ objects, find-by-name will become > necessary. The objects don't really have a name (apart from their type) right now. Obviously, a Class has a name, as does some other things. Yeah, it's an option to keep open. > Lars, FWIW, please add one No vote on the start-up hints. Thanks to you, > I read Joel's book tonight, which doesn't contain anything earthshaking, > but is funny and pithy. One of his themes is that users want to *do* > something, and software that interrupts the doing to spout off about the > how-to-do is just in the way. (His critique of the Windows help file(s) > sizing dialog is wonderful.) > > When I start a program, the last thing I want is hints about how to do > something I'm not thinking about. It's self-important. I want to open > my file or plop a few shapes onto a new one, thanks. If I want to read > the docs, I'll do that. If I have to read the docs, the UI failed. The only thing I *really* want to see in the start-up hints is mention of the right and middle mouse menus. I've seen reviews of Gimp complaining about how little you could do because the reviewer never figured out the right mouse menus. Can you think of a better way to indicate this? Though perhaps the use in Windows of right mouse menus has made this concept well-known enough. -Lars -- Lars Clausen (http://shasta.cs.uiuc.edu/~lrclause)| Hårdgrim of Numenor "I do not agree with a word that you say, but I | will defend to the death your right to say it." | Where are we going, and --Evelyn Beatrice Hall paraphrasing Voltaire | what's with the handbasket? ___ Dia-list mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/dia-list
Re: Review of Keybindings [Re: Dia's user interface]
On Tuesday 23 April 2002 12:33, Lars Clausen wrote: > > The only thing I *really* want to see in the start-up hints > is mention of the right and middle mouse menus. I've seen > reviews of Gimp complaining about how little you could do > because the reviewer never figured out the right mouse menus. > Can you think of a better way to indicate this? Though > perhaps the use in Windows of right mouse menus has made this > concept well-known enough. In Windows, and also in KDE and other places, the right-mouse menu is a useful addition to the way the user can interact with the application. In the Gimp and also Dia, it is almost a mandatory way. So, users should be made aware of this. I had a bad first experience with the Gimp because I failed to discover the right-mouse menu. -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ Dia-list mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/dia-list
Re: Dia's user interface
On Tue, 23 Apr 2002, Lars Clausen wrote: > I agree with you on this. I have considered removing the !, but I never > thought of removing the whole string. Three randomly sampled GTK programs > (Sodipodi, Gnumeric and Gnucash) don't have any indication of modification > at all. Gedit has "(modified)" in the window title, whereas Gimp prepends > a *. I think we should go with the *. Since we warn before closing a > modified diagram anyway, the information is not that important. > I just want to say that for me is quite important to know if the diagram has been saved before closing it: Many times I open a diagram and go from changing the diagram to process it once and again. And is very important to be sure the diagram was saved before processing it. May be the present string is too big; but may be the * is too small. Loli email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent using NeoMail, a web-based e-mail client. http://neomail.sourceforge.net ___ Dia-list mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/dia-list
Re: Dia's user interface
On Tue, 23 Apr 2002, Dolores Alia de Saravia wrote: > > I just want to say that for me is quite important to know if the > diagram has been saved before closing it: Many times I open a diagram > and go from changing the diagram to process it once and again. And is > very important to be sure the diagram was saved before processing it. > > May be the present string is too big; but may be the * is too small. Unless you exit Dia by brutal means (leaving X, typing Ctrl-C in a terminal), Dia will ask before closing an unsaved diagram. So you won't accidentally lose your work just because you don't notice the modified marker. -Lars -- Lars Clausen (http://shasta.cs.uiuc.edu/~lrclause)| Hårdgrim of Numenor "I do not agree with a word that you say, but I | will defend to the death your right to say it." | Where are we going, and --Evelyn Beatrice Hall paraphrasing Voltaire | what's with the handbasket? ___ Dia-list mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/dia-list
Re: Dia's user interface
Le Tue, Apr 23, 2002, à 04:07:01PM -0300, Dolores Alia de Saravia a écrit: > May be the present string is too big; but may be the * is too small. You've got a point here. Perhaps an icon (a bit like MS Word's floppy icon (which is also in Borland C++)) should make things obvious, and yet not be too obtrusive. Looks like many people have fun discussing UI issues, nowadays. This is Good! -- Cyrille -- Grumpf. ___ Dia-list mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/dia-list
Re: Dia's user interface
Lars Clausen wrote: > > On Tue, 23 Apr 2002, Dolores Alia de Saravia wrote: > > > > I just want to say that for me is quite important to know if the > > diagram has been saved before closing it: Many times I open a diagram > > and go from changing the diagram to process it once and again. And is > > very important to be sure the diagram was saved before processing it. > > > > May be the present string is too big; but may be the * is too small. > > Unless you exit Dia by brutal means (leaving X, typing Ctrl-C in a > terminal), Dia will ask before closing an unsaved diagram. So you won't > accidentally lose your work just because you don't notice the modified > marker. I suspect the concern is that she wants to be sure she has saved the diagram *before* doing additional work on it (as a check-point, I suppose). Perhaps color could help (red -> modified, green -> unchanged from saved copy)? (Or red and invisible...) -- Steve Wampler -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] O sibile, si ergo. Fortibus es enaro. Nobile, demis trux. Demis phulla causan dux. ___ Dia-list mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/dia-list
Re: Dia's user interface
Le Tue, Apr 23, 2002, à 03:35:22PM -0500, Lars Clausen a écrit: > Unless you exit Dia by brutal means (leaving X, typing Ctrl-C in a > terminal), Dia will ask before closing an unsaved diagram. So you won't > accidentally lose your work just because you don't notice the modified > marker. ... or dia terminates itself by other violent means... -- Cyrille -- Grumpf. ___ Dia-list mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/dia-list
Re: Dia's user interface
On Tuesday 23 April 2002 12:21, Lars Clausen wrote:
>
> This is not quite true: If you select a tool from one sheet,
> then change to another, the indication is wrong.
Yet, I think it is obvious the user must be able to know
at any time which tool he is using.
> Actually, I'm thinking if anything, the selected tool should
> be indicated by the pointer. The non-object tools already do
> this, and we could have a ghostly icon next to the pointer
> when another tool is selected.
Good idea.
> > I usually use this area to report error messages
> > that don't deserve a window popup, which is the case most
> > of the times ("The blabla field is not a number." in red
> > ink in the status bar has proved to be enough).
>
> That's a possibility, though how often does that happen? And
> if it happens inside a dialog, shouldn't it be shown inside
> the dialog?
Yes of course. What I was suggesting doesn't appear very good
for Dia, so forget about it! :)
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Re: Dia's user interface
On Tue, 23 Apr 2002, Cyrille Chepelov wrote: > Le Tue, Apr 23, 2002, à 03:35:22PM -0500, Lars Clausen a écrit: > >> Unless you exit Dia by brutal means (leaving X, typing Ctrl-C in a >> terminal), Dia will ask before closing an unsaved diagram. So you won't >> accidentally lose your work just because you don't notice the modified >> marker. > > ... or dia terminates itself by other violent means... I am in fact in these very procrastinative days working on an autosave feature. Haven't decided where to put the autosave files yet, but otherwise it should be fairly easy. -Lars -- Lars Clausen (http://shasta.cs.uiuc.edu/~lrclause)| Hårdgrim of Numenor "I do not agree with a word that you say, but I | will defend to the death your right to say it." | Where are we going, and --Evelyn Beatrice Hall paraphrasing Voltaire | what's with the handbasket?
RE: Dia's user interface
> -Original Message- > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On > Behalf Of Lars Clausen > > Unless you exit Dia by brutal means (leaving X, typing Ctrl-C in a > terminal), Dia will ask before closing an unsaved diagram. So you won't > accidentally lose your work just because you don't notice the modified > marker. I suspect the reason is because she wants to run an external program against the Dia generated file. So while an autosave feature would help against the various issues listed, it still won't help in that case. Tom ___ Dia-list mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/dia-list
Re: Dia's user interface
On Tue, 23 Apr 2002, Tom Sorensen wrote: >> -Original Message- >> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On >> Behalf Of Lars Clausen >> >> Unless you exit Dia by brutal means (leaving X, typing Ctrl-C in a >> terminal), Dia will ask before closing an unsaved diagram. So you won't >> accidentally lose your work just because you don't notice the modified >> marker. > > I suspect the reason is because she wants to run an external program > against the Dia generated file. So while an autosave feature would help > against the various issues listed, it still won't help in that case. I see, I hadn't thought of that case. Makes me want to add a plugin that will allow a shell command to be executed on a diagram, implicitly saving it etc. But nah. -Lars -- Lars Clausen (http://shasta.cs.uiuc.edu/~lrclause)| Hårdgrim of Numenor "I do not agree with a word that you say, but I | will defend to the death your right to say it." | Where are we going, and --Evelyn Beatrice Hall paraphrasing Voltaire | what's with the handbasket? ___ Dia-list mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/dia-list
RE: Dia's user interface
> Lars Clausen wrote: > > On Tue, 23 Apr 2002, Adrien Beau wrote: > > On Sunday 21 April 2002 14:43, Lars Clausen wrote: > >> > >> If there are any, > >> could you point out the worst problems that Dia has in its > >> interface? I'd like to turn some attention to that as we > >> work towards a 1.0 release. > > > > It's a minor problem, but it seems to me that "Diagram modified!" > > is almost always displayed in the status bar. If I understand > > correctly, it is just a file modified indicator. > > > > First error with that: never ever shout at your users. No > > exclamation mark. Personnaly, in the few GUIs I've written, > > I've only used excl. marks in "impossible case" dialogs > > (where assertions would be better, but I don't use Java 1.4 > > yet). Always be calm and nice to your user. Especially when > > there are problems. > > > > Second error with that: it's way too big for its purpose. > > It's distracting to have this status message ever present. > > Why not do what Vim (and others probably) do? Put a * in > > the window title, as in "varicella.dia *", when the file > > is modified, remove it when the file is saved or undo > > operations bring the diagram back to the state that was > > saved (the latter one being not necessarily easy). > > I agree with you on this. I have considered removing the !, > but I never > thought of removing the whole string. Three randomly sampled > GTK programs > (Sodipodi, Gnumeric and Gnucash) don't have any indication of > modification > at all. Gedit has "(modified)" in the window title, whereas > Gimp prepends > a *. I think we should go with the *. Since we warn before closing a > modified diagram anyway, the information is not that important. > > Now's the question: Is there some more relevant information > to put there? > Currently selected tool? Number of objects selected (after a select > operation)? Something? Current coordinates would be great (even which page you are currently in) - in the currently selected units :-). When dragging, the offset from the original drag point in x,y and distance (sqrt(x^2+y^2)). I know this makes it just like a CAD program, but in many ways Dia is a CAD program - when drawing electrical (etc) diagrams I have no doubt that Dia is a CAD package. Distances are useful for designing shapes that have the same proportions, for drawing simple 'to scale' diagrams, for making drawings look 'nice' because they're in proportion. I also vote for the current grid snap status, maybe even clicking on the value changes it or brings up the dialog to change it. Thanks, Rob. ___ Dia-list mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/dia-list
Zoom combo box?
Now that we're talking about the bottom of the display, do anybody have strong feelings about the zoom combobox? It's not currently as functional as it could be (Sodipodi gets it right), but it could also just be replaced with a label. Or a button with a pop-up menu like the Zoom menu. It certainly needs fixing, one way or the other. -Lars -- Lars Clausen (http://shasta.cs.uiuc.edu/~lrclause)| Hårdgrim of Numenor "I do not agree with a word that you say, but I | will defend to the death your right to say it." | Where are we going, and --Evelyn Beatrice Hall paraphrasing Voltaire | what's with the handbasket? ___ Dia-list mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/dia-list
Re: Zoom combo box?
On Tuesday, April 23, 2002, at 09:00 PM, Lars Clausen wrote: > Now that we're talking about the bottom of the display, do anybody have > strong feelings about the zoom combobox? It's not currently as > functional > as it could be (Sodipodi gets it right), but it could also just be > replaced > with a label. Or a button with a pop-up menu like the Zoom menu. It > certainly needs fixing, one way or the other. > > -Lars I like the way PhotoShop does this ( I think GIMP does it similarly) it's a slider between buttons for - (zoom out) on the left, + (zoom in) on the right. Very easy to use, especially with the overview window. Russell Holt [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ Dia-list mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/dia-list
