Re: PATCH: radio cell and mobile base station

["W. Borgert" <debacle debian org>]

Quoting Alan Horkan <horkana@maths.tcd.ie>:
> On Sun, 7 Dec 2003, W. Borgert wrote:
> > fortunately it hasn't been applied :-) In the original
> > patch, the base station was implemented as shape, which was
> > not very nice.  Now I did both base station and radio cell
>
> I'd be interested if you could be specific about what was so bad about
> being a shape.  Perhaps there is something in the shapes infrastructure
> that needs to be fixed and improved?

Only the usual things: Objects may be implement more flexible
resizing and they can have much more interesting attributes,
like UML classes have.  I did not use these things in those
objects now, but I think about adding stuff in the future.

ATM, shapes are not so flexible in dia in most cases:
Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I think one can only
resize shapes keeping the aspect ratio, but sometimes one
doesn't want this.  One cannot have parts of the shapes that
are not resized.  One doesn't have invisible element
attributes e.g. for code generation (see UML).

Just try to puzzle with the jigsaw shapes: I was not able
to generate sth. that fits with the jigsaw shapes.  Snap to
grid makes things worse and after resizing I was lost
completely.  With objects one could have handles and
connectors at the right positions, to that both connecting
and resizing would make sense.

Of course, one could add all these features to shapes, so
that objects are not necessary, but this would take a lot of
design and implementation work.

Don't get me wrong: For most things, the existing shapes
are perfectly OK, but if you go for advanced stuff (e.g.
code generation), objects seem to be better.

Cheers, WB

[Btw. thanks for your hint about Bugzilla in the other mail,
I will apply for an account there.  The last time I tried
Bugzilla it was much more complicated than the Debian BTS.
E.g. I did not find a way to report a bug by mail.  I hope
things have changed to the better.]