Re: new member

[larsrc raeder dk]

Luc Pionchon sagde:
> Hello,
>
> On Sun, 2004-12-26 at 20:46 +0000, Paul Sutton wrote:
>> Hi
>>
>> I am a rugby coach in the Uk, (but also into computers)  I thought it
>> would be an nice idea to have a program that could help me draw diagrams
>> of drills for my coaching sessions,  but I have very little programming
>> knowledge,  then I remembered dia and thought that it would probably be
>> more worth while getting some help with new elements for this or just
>> suggesting some,  and perhaps help the program branch out into another
>> area.

I just want to say that this is probably the most unusual use of Dia so far.

>
>> if any one on the list is involved with coaching (or knows any coaches)
>> perhaps they may have some more ideas,
>>
>> I would think that a line would be a good way to represent a player
>> moving with a ball,  a broken line could represent a player running
>> without a ball and a different broken line represents the path of ball
>> being passed,
>>
>> I therefore decided to join the list so I could possibly get help with
>> this idea / concept.
>
> I am very interested by the idea. I will soon need some software to draw
> coaching diagrams, unfortunately I found nothing both specific and open
> source.
>
> With dia it is very easy to make your own sheet (for example "rugby")
> with custom elements. I have been quickly experimenting with the idea
> some times ago. Here are my two concerns:
>
> - Elements must not be scalable, so you keep the same ratio for all of
> them and just zoom in and out. (Is it possible at all with shapes?)

There is a setting to make elements have fixed aspect ratio, but AFAIR no
way to make them not scalable.  It would be easy to add, though.

> - Players need rotation
>
> Lars: what is the state with rotation? Any help needed?

After making enough of an attempt to see what problems I'd be running
into, I have come to the conclusion that I'll not be adding rotation
before 1.0.  It would require rather a lot of work in the renderers and in
the autorouting algorithm.  Getting rotated groups to make sense
internally is not trivial either.  And this is before considering what the
interface would be like.  I might make text elements rotateable as a
special case.  Of course, if somebody else thinks it's easy, go ahead. 
Notes should go on
http://faemalia.org/wiki/view/Technical/RotationAndScaling.

-Lars