Re: Reread file option for "image" standard object

[Alan Horkan <horkana tcd ie>]

> The rereading of file can be made whenever these two things have
> happened, in this order:
>
> a) the file has changed
> b)the user has clicked the apply or ok button.

This is what i was getting at.  I recommend you take a look at Netscape
Composer.  If you change (the html of) a file that is currently open in
Netscape Composer (the html editing part of Netscape) you get the
following dialog

Reload file

 This page has been modified by another program.
 Reload page to see changes

 [ Yes ] [ No ]


I recommend you use something very similar (if you use exactly the same
words the translators will be able to just look at how netscape/mozilla
translated the message).

I also see that if you (re)move an image, netscape says the following

  The file  *filename.jpg removed* associated with this page can't be
  saved.  Make sure the file is in the correct location.

  If you continue saving *filename.jpg* won't be saved with this page
   [ OK  ] [ Cancel ]

Although i think it would be much cooler if in this kind of situation dia
would offer to save the image currently being displayed instead.

Unfortunately i am looking at Netscape 4.x (i dont have mozilla on this
machine) so Mozilla probably has much more intelligent behaviour for these
kinds of situations.  This is not something that requires any innovation.
I notice Composer has in its View menu both Refresh and Reload (probably
some very minor difference).  Dia might benifit from having a View Refresh
option (at least in the short term until we can figure out which places
need to have an extra call to refresh/redraw like the one i may have
mentioned before when adding new shapes to sheets, or other occasions of
screen dirt people have mentioned)

Just to quickly also address some of your comments that you mentioned
offlist.

You made a very good point that if the image on disk is gone then having a
broken image placeholder would be pretty useless.  Ideally dia could offer
to write the image it has in memory back to disk (as suggested above).
I have thought about various ways to imporve the image handling.  It would
be good if instead of stretching a non vector image as we currently do for
the broken image, if instead we used some scalable text and a vector image
(a big red x or something) and possibly even overlay this over the
old broken image.  Just a thought.

The work you are doing sounds very interesting.  I wonder if dia is
currently the most appropriate tool for the kind of circuitry work you are
doing but nonetheless i am very glad that you are contributing to dia.  I
think redundant development is a terrible shame and it is a pity that we
do not have a backend engine for simulating circuitry or that there is not
a circuit diagram program that does not use or build on top of some the
same basic pieces as dia.  I guess all i can do to change this is to start
building and maybe add features that would make dia more attractive to
people designing circuitry.  When dia has many more shapes and plugins it
might even make sense to have programs that are technically just dia with
custom plugins and shapes distributed as a seperate program (but still
part of the Dia collection).  Daydreaming again and getting totally ahead
of myself, cant wait to get back to drawing more shapes (maybe even
programming a few shapes).

I really going to have to go back through the mailing list archives and
post Bugs reports and Requests for enhancement for all these little things
i keep noticing.

Gotta go do some work

Sincerley
Alan Horkan