GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 109162
2 user comments - is there rotation and fixed color palet
Last modified: 2004-12-22 21:47:04 UTC
Hi dia is a fantastic drawing tool - thanks. 2 comments: 1. I could not see how to rotate the circuit element library - for instance - the AND point upwards. Presumably there is a way and I did not spot it. In windows there is a 'rotation thing' - I could nolt see anything like it in dia. 2. a color pallet with a FIXED number of colors (say 16) could be usefull - then we can always get the same colors back. best wishes angus goudie. PS - sorry if I got the 'wrong end of the stick' about anything - dia is good.
Thanks for your comments. I have good news and bad news: Rotation is not implemented in Dia. While the underlying structure shouldn't pose too many difficulties, we are still pondering how to make a good user interface for it. If you have some suggestions on how rotation could be done in an intuitive manner, please let us know. In version 0.91, we use Gtk2.0, whose color selector has a fixed (but changable) palette. I highly recommend you upgrade, since much has improved since 0.85.
Rotation: In windows apps there is usually a stick ( or handle?) somehow marked as rotation. You grab this and rotate and then SEE the object rotate. One quickly learns how to use it - I guess the precise implementation details are not important (assuming a marked rotation handle and we see the rotation in real time). best wishes angus goudie
Yes, I definitely want to be able to see the object rotate. But the handles currently have the function of resizing the object. Unless I misunderstand your suggestion, those two functionalities would have to use the same handle somehow?
I use windows and have seen applications which use rotations in 2 ways: 1. reassign one of the 8 handels as a rotation handle. There should be a rotation symble by it - typically a 270 degree arc with an arrow head at one end. The uses places the mouse over it - it then changes color (to show it is engaged) if the use presses the mouse and moves the mouse - the ratation symble withh check the mouse and rotate the object (about some center). 2. define a new handle for rotation - it could be an isolated 'knob' or a knob with a line to the center of ratation. There may be a rotation symble by the knob. The uses uses it just like 1 above. Personally, I think the 2nd idea seems more intuitive.
Method 2 does sound better. There's also been some call for generic scaling (rather than resize, which changes shape but keeps line size, font size etc). That may be done with another such knob. Knobs should probably be a little out from the border of the element. Alan, do you have any UI angle on this?
Do you mean me = angus (not allen)?. comments - none about resizing. How I envisage rotation is this: the knob to be about 5mm outside the area, be brightly colored (red?) , with a line (same color) to the center of rotation. I don't know how 5mm relates to pixels or screen size - pesumably it is related to you comment about resizing somehow. I cannot recall if you have it in dia, - but I guess there should be a user option to tell dia whether to DISPLAY (and print?) the drawing in thick or thin lines. I imagine you have an object/structure? (=record in delphi- which I use) where you hold the values of line widths/fonts/5mm! etc - so they can be changed globally. if the user tell dia to write thick lines - it will initiate a procedure to operate on this object/structure. best wishes angus goudie
Rotation and Snap. Some objects such as circuit elements (AND gates, for instance) will only ever need be rotated through multipules of 90 degrees. Other objects (lines, for instatnce) could want almost analog rotation. Some drawing packages have the concept of 'snapping' to a grid. I guess this could be extended to rotation as well.
No, lars means me, Alan. The gtk drawing widget did not support rotation out of the box, and i geuss we were just hoping that someone would add it to the toolkit so we would not have to. Unfortunately as far as I know no one is really working on that part of GTK. Please dont put more than one bug per bug report. There is already a bug for rotation stuff. (need to add the alogrithm i looked up recently, sine and cosine of theta blah...) I too would really like having a fixed colour pallet for the basics. I hope this bug report is inaccurate and you are not in fact using Dia 0.85, Dia 0.91 has a much better colour widget but it is still not ideal (cant remember exactly dont have a copy of dia right here, right now). GUI wise i will almost certainly recommend copying existing software as closely as possible and in all likely hood that means Microsoft Visio. Changing one of the 8 handles and turning it into a Rotation handle wont work IMHO. However, look at Kivio, if you have a rectangular type object and grab the bottom right handle you can move it past the left most handle and it will flip across the axis. (This is a pain to explain, you really need to see it for yourself). I will copy the comments about rotation over to the other bug report later.
always try using the newest version of Dia before reporting bugs. I took the time to look at the colour picker in 0.91 and it rocks (thanks Lars, even better than i expected). It includes the feature you mention. marking this as a duplicate of bug 100886 which is about rotation, need to copy across relevant comments to that bug before Closing this bug completely.
*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 100886 ***