Re: Contributing new shapes

[Alan Horkan <horkana maths tcd ie>]

Howto Contribute new shapes to Dia:

For references purposes I'll repeat a few things you obviously arleady
know about but hopefully the next person will search the Dia mailing list
archives http://mail.gnome.org/archives/dia-list/ and find this message
useful.

The Official Dia website:
http://www.lysator.liu.se/~alla/dia/dia.html

Howto make your own Dia Shapes and Sheets
http://www.lysator.liu.se/~alla/dia/faq.html#AddingShapes

more information in the custom shapes document:
http://www.lysator.liu.se/~alla/dia/custom-shapes

On Sun, 23 Nov 2003, Tsoukalas Giorgos wrote:

> Date: Sun, 23 Nov 2003 20:20:01 +0200
> From: Tsoukalas Giorgos <gtsouk@unipi.gr>
> Reply-To: dia-list@gnome.org
> To: dia-list@gnome.org
> Subject: Contributing new shapes
>
> Hi
> I am a new dia user and i believe it is a realy promising project.
> I had to make a few of my own shapes (following instruction on the
> documentation)
> for intergrated circuits. It is nothing much, but why not share them right?

Great!

I'm thinking we* should start collecting these additional shapes up into
some sort of library and allowing users to download and install them
manually.  (* and by we, I mean I should get organised and do it!)
I was really quite impressed by the Flags Collection/Clipart that the
Sodipodi team have put together recently.
(I'd provide a link but http://sodipodi.com/ doesn't work, so I'll just
provide a link to Inkscape http://inkscape.org instead)

Currently we need to add lots of _underscores in the XML to make the
labels and descriptions localisable and do a little bit of makefile magic,
include the files in CVS and wait for the next release.  The more help you
can give us with this the better.  (there was a mailing list post ages ago
by Cyrille explaining about the makefiles but I did a quick search of the
mailing list archives using google: 'site:mail.gnome.org dia' and various
keywords but I have not been able to find it yet).  Hopefully the examples
in the source code should be enough to get you started if you are
interested.

Best thing to do is tar and gzip the shapes you have made and put them on
a website somewhere so we can try them out.  It would also be a good idea
to create a bugzilla report to track these new shapes and either include a
link to your shapes in the report or attach your tarball to the report.
(if putting the shapes on a website is not convenient then just attaching
them to a bugzilla report should be enough.

I'd be interested in a description of the shapes you have made, how they
are different or better than the shapes that are already included
with Dia.

> Thats the whole idea behind open source software.
> So my question is where should i send these shapes in order to be
> included (if they are good enough) in the next dia version.
> I searched the site and i didnt find a relative link. I suggest that

(I'm sure you must have meant relevant link.  Relative link means
something else quite different)

> there should be a place where users can post their new shapes.
> In case such place exists and i couldn't find it, please someone
> send me the link.

Which reminds me, someone else created new shapes and I promised I'd look
at them already.

Hope that helps.

Sincerely

Alan Horkan
http://advogato.org/person/AlanHorkan/

PS Thanks for providing a meaningful subject line, it is always helpful
and instead of complaining I thought I should say thanks for a change.