Cross platform diagrams?

[Ian Britten <britten caris com>]

Hi all,
We're trying (but not with great success) to use Dia on both Linux and
Windows (and Solaris...) with the actual diagrams maintained in CVS
(versioning, backups, central access, etc, etc)

The main problem (as you can probably predict) is with text (which is a
major part of our diagrams - UML, etc, etc).
Specifically, the width/kerning seems to be different (assuming you can
even get it to use the same font...)
(Height is off a bit too, but not too bad...)

We've been using 0.90, and generally sticking to Courier, and this has
been far-from-perfect, but good-enough-for-now.

As we use Freetype extensively ourselves, I had been anticipating (hoping?)
that Dia 0.91 would magically solve all these problems...
It hasn't... :-<
(Note I'm not pointing blame though - I'm well acquainted with the
difficulties of dealing with fonts/text...)

For example, if you make a simple UML class with some methods/members, then
add some lines corresponding to the borders of the box, then take it to
a different platform and open it there, the UML box won't correspond to
the lines.  In a large diagram, this means things aren't aligned,
connections are disconnected, etc, etc.

In some ways, 0.91 is a little worse than 0.90, because with the Pango
font default name stuff ('sans', 'monospace', etc), you don't even get the
same font any more...  (I even tried explicitely using 'Courier' on Linux
but that didn't match the 'Courier New' on Windows... Grrr...)

Now, in all honesty, I haven't done exhaustive testing... Maybe the
problems are only with certain diagram elements (UML, etc), or certain
fonts, or something.

What I'm wondering first is, what should I expect?
Should I be able to move a diagram from one platform to another, and
still have it draw (text) correctly?  Will it (not)work in any/all
cases?  Certain diagram elements?  Certain fonts?  Certain setups?

I'm hoping to push for wider usage of Dia within the company (Rather than
a certain expensive/propriatary/nonportable product...), but if the
diagrams don't interchange well, it'll be very difficult to convince
people to use it...

Thanks for any info!  Keep up the great work!
Ian