Re: [long] lots of problems, you did ask ... [was Re: RC1 stats]

[Hans Breuer <hans breuer org>]

At 17:29 25.05.02 +0100, Alan Horkan wrote:
> [...] (constructive critism, or at least i hope so).
>
Well done, but as always there are some things which could be improved :-)

First of all splitting the mail by content (i.e. points of interest
or responsibilities) would have made it more simple to answer. I'll
almost skip the Installer and Documentation issues.

Second: There seems to be no bug mentioned which should stop the
release. Most of the things are useful but not cruical enhancements.
Or is my interpretation wrong ? 
Fileing them at bugzilla will remind interested developers to look 
at the issues again for the next release ...

>The installer generates a batch file that sets the %HOME% variable every
>time and then calls dia.  I think it would be much simpler to just add the
>following line to the autoexec.bat file:
>SET HOME=%windir%    REM Dia expects a Home variable.
>
This would neither work form win9x to win XP nor being polite to
people who know how to set their homedir. Also it is the wrong 
directory.

>This would permanently add the Home variable rather than using a
>wrapper script every time and this is generally a hell of a lot simpler
>(but ideally dia would fix this in the code).
IMHO it is almost fixed in the code for a long time. But if you don't
have any sensible environmanet vars set it still must fail. BTW:
some of the fallback env vars are set by the system from system
defaults - at least for newer OS versions. 
See glib/gutil.c (g_get_homedir) for more details.

>The tree view is intersting, but i was also hoping/expecting to see the
>new Preferences dialog and Hubert Figueres toolbar enhancement.
>
IIRC there was no consensus on the new Prefernces dialog (at least
I see as much disadvantages with it than advantages). It never
made it into cvs.
If with 'toolbar enhancements' you mean the Diagram menu, it is
there and can be activated by File/Preferences/Use menu bar.

>the fonts in the PDF manual dont look good at all.
Yeah. PDF sucks. Maybe it could be improved by using a more
generic font.
>
>i was looking for documentation dia's command line arguements but was
>unable to find any in the win32 version.
>the local unix system had the man page,
>dia [-h] [--help] [-e OUTPUT] [--export-to-ps=OUTPUT] files ... ]
>but neither -h nor --help seem to work on windows.  (FYI abiword is using
>popt to harmonise and make its command line arguements consistant across
>platfroms and i realise win32 is a PITA in this regard).
IMHO popt is a pain in the ass. I was hoping some generic command
line parsing would make it into Gtk+2.0 but it hasn't.
Maybe I need to look at popt again :)

>if the man page is/were maintained as SMGL/DocBook it
>should be possible to include a copy of it with the html documentation.
>
>i was really hoping there would be a -nosplash option to disable the
>splash screen.  The only use i can think of for a splash screen (besides
>annoying marketing) is to assure the user (give visual feedback that) it
>is loading the program is very slow to load.
Currently the main purpose of the splash screen is to force the user
to notice the program version. But I originally added it because
initializing all those plug-ins is kind of slow.

>When i right click on a diagram and do not have an object selected i
>expected the Diagram Properties dialog (which includes background
>propeties) rather than an error message telling me i have not selected
>anything.  Alternatively (but less useful) if all you are going to do is
>tell me i have nothing seleceted then why not grey/gray out the Properties
>menu item.
>
Because of generic code. You can select other objects or deselect
them while the properties dialog is open. And it should update
it's content automatically.

>I like standard keybindings.  I like consistant keybindings.  I like
>Ctrl+Modifier (or whatever platform specific command key+Modifier).
>In RC1 Ctrl+W is bound to Save As.
Giving the impression that some old bug is new in the current release
isn't that useful. Although I agree that Ctrl^W shouldn't be bound to
'Save As ...' it is at least there since Dia 0.86.

Changing keybindings was discussed on this list for a while but again
there was neither a consensus nor a conplete list to actually fix 
them only _once and forever_ :-)

Kind regards,
	Hans 
-------- Hans "at" Breuer "dot" Org -----------
Tell me what you need, and I'll tell you how to 
get along without it.                -- Dilbert