Re: dia 0.94: Connections lost after upgrade from 0.92.2 ?

[Lars Clausen <lars raeder dk>]

On Thu, 2005-03-03 at 10:32 +0100, Carsten Fuchs wrote:
> Hello again,
> 
> another question just occurred to me:
> After the upgrade from 0.92.2 to 0.94 on Windows 98 and 2000, it seems
> that the new support for anti-aliased fonts implies changes of the width
> of some shapes, e.g. the "UML class" shapes.
> Unfortunately, when I had previously (in 0.92.2) connected e.g. a line
> to two UML classes, the line start and end points are still in their
> original place after opening this diagram in 0.94, they are not
> connected to the UML class shape anymore.
> 
> It seems that dia does not explicitly save connections between lines and
> shapes, and that the new width of the shapes in 0.94 thus implicitly
> tears the connections apart.
> 
> Well, before I start fixing all my diagrams manually, I'd rather ask if
> there is something that I've overlooked or something that can be done to
> get things right automatically?

Dia does not tear them apart, it just looks that way.  What's happening
is that the renderers don't agree on the width of the text, and so the
size of the box changes between them.  When that happens, the
connections aren't updated at once, only when you move them.

The Right Solution is really to keep explicit lengths for everything,
only change that when the text itself changes, and then force the
renderers, one way or another, to conform to that length.  Anything else
is just asking for trouble.

-Lars