Dia Test-Run

[Ben Gillis <bgillis airmail net>]

Hi,

I am giving Dia a test run; it is very, very nice to see something out 
there that can replace Visio.  (I have been a Visio user since 1994, and 
MS has all but destroyed it with poor quality, bugs I never saw until MS 
acquired it).

I am looking to replace MS Visio as my primary drawing tool for software 
development projects; mostly used for drawings, UML diagrams and such. 
However, in order to do that, I am going to have to be able to pull off 
a few things with whatever drawing tool I use.

I realize this is an open source, pre 1.0 release (and job well done so 
far, I might add ;-)  There are a couple of questions I have about it, 
hoping someone might be able to answer:

1. Text in Shapes - I can't seem to select a shape, type, and have text 
show up in the shape.  Rather, I have to explicitly overlay the shape w/ 
text from the Text Tool.  Am I doing something wrong?  (I can't find any 
text-based properties for the shape; should I assume text is not an 
attribute of a shape in this 0.93 release?)

2. Programming APIs - will I be able to write programs/scripts to parse 
the drawings, like Visio offers?  A scripting way to do so (like Visio's 
VBA, or third-generation language (preferred, actually) like C or C++ 
would be fantastico.  Is that in the works?  Available?

I will keep reading docs and playing with it.

Thanks,

Ben