On Thu, 23 Jan 2003, jonni@lehtiranta.net wrote:
> Greetings!
>
> I'm having an university level project course about computer
> architecture and I figured I'd use DIA for drawing schematics.
> My needs are higher level than "Circuit" or "Electric" diagram
> types, but the more applicable "Logic" set is rather limited,
> and seriously that until I can at least rotate. So I figured
> out I'd put together shapes of my own.
I have a bunch of updated Logic shapes at home, mostly involving better
icons, but also with the horizontal/vertical distinction. I'm not putting
them in right now as we're in a feature freeze, but I can send them to you.
> So, I figured out how to export shapes and hand-edit them for
> perfection, but this still leaves two questions:
> - What is the desired line width in components? What
> should it be preset to? Is there an option for
> setting line width of new objects according to a
> "preference" or changing line width of all objects
> simultaneously?
If you group together objects, you can set properties for them all at the
same time. There is a bug on it, though, in that all properties are set,
not just the changed ones.
> - What about LINES? I didn't find a "perfect line"
> anywhere. The UML message is a good arrow but it
> doesn't snap with another line, so building L-shaped
> connections seem impossible (to do well).
I don't get what you mean by 'perfect line'. What can you do with one?
What would it look like? Have you tried the zigzagline?
> I'd also like the option to specify both a name and
> a "number-of-wires" info to an arrow and get them to
> print nicely.
Let me see if I understand you right: You want something that can have an
arrow in one end, but a number of lines in the other, and that shows a name
and the number of lines? Or something else? Can you do a mock-up perhaps?
> My question is, how hard would it be to build a "diagram
> type" for this kind of work? How could I do it? I guess the
> funny-shaped-boxes with connections etc would not be hard.
> Or, would it, with selectable background colors, text field(s),
> selectable "bit depth" (a big box with a selectable number of
> small boxes underneath)?. And, what about my perfect idea of
> an arrow?=) Programming is not a problem, or not a big one
> anyway, if I can read the code.. =).
Programming new objects is not nearly as hard as it used to be:) It
doesn't involve GTK programming at all, unless you want to do very unusual
properties. There's a fair amount of boilerplate, though. I've started an
overview of how to program new objects on the Dia twiki:
http://faemalia.org/wiki/view/Technical/ProgrammedObject
Whether the individual parts of it would be hard I cannot tell from your
description.
-Lars
--
Lars Clausen (http://shasta.cs.uiuc.edu/~lrclause)| Hårdgrim of Numenor
"I do not agree with a word that you say, but I |----------------------------
will defend to the death your right to say it." | Where are we going, and
--Evelyn Beatrice Hall paraphrasing Voltaire | what's with the handbasket?