Dia and CVS

[Ian Epperson <Ian axiomdesign com>]

Here at my company, we're stuck in the Windows world.  Last year, we
discovered CVS and there was much rejoicing.  Now, just about everything
gets put into CVS.

I've been evaluating Dia, and it looks great!  Thank you to everyone who
made this possible!  Unfortunately, it's not very CVS friendly.  I think
with two minor tweaks, that could change.

First, being able to save the document out as text is perfect!  What isn't
perfect is that when the document is re-opened, the default save
re-compresses the file.  If Dia could remember that a file was un-compressed
when it was opened, then every time it saved the file, it could stay
un-compressed.

Second, the XML seems to have no line breaks in it.  As CVS merge/diff
operations work on a line by line basis, it would be best if there were as
many line breaks as possible in the file.  At the very least, one per
object.  If there were a break on every ">", then it would be possible for
one user to edit the text of an object, while the another manipulates the
size/position.

With these two (minor?) changes, it's possible that two users could edit the
same file at the same time, and changes could be intelligently merged by
CVS.  Doing this would make Dia a much more powerful product.

Thanks for your attention
Ian.

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