Re: Idea: adding hyperlinks to diagrams

[Cyrille Chepelov <cyrille chepelov org>]

An idea like this has been floated around a couple of times already. Nobody
came up with an implementation. I don't see anything wrong with this idea --
quite the contrary, that could help build something very powerful when
coupled with external programs: think about what the combination of doxygen,
dot, dia(UML) with this feature and a PNG+HTMLmap export plugin could yield.
Or combinations of other tools, for more creative uses (I remember one guy 
demonstrated last fall a very cool usage of dia for producing interactive 
web diagrams -- I just can't remember who, where or when -- but IIRC he had
to do some complex scripting to post-process the diagrams).

I would include a well-written patch towards this feature. I would also gladly
help shape an imperfect patch towards inclusion.

One possibility would be to add a new property type, "link". Define its
load/save, get/set and edit methods. Then, test-add it to a couple existing
objects (Rectangle for instance). Next, make the context-menu aware of the
existence of the link object (perhaps by builing a middle-menu on the fly if
there's a link property, or adding to the existing middle-menu when objects
have one). Finally, if that works, simply add this "link" property to the
Element base class: all objects will now be hyperlinkable. And, icing on the
cake, make the export plugins aware of that property type (perhaps by
tweaking the rendering code, perhaps by adding a new "hyperlink region" call
or family of calls ?) where relevant, so that exported diagrams could also
benefit from this.

Have fun !

	-- Cyrille


-- 
Grumpf.