GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 137734
"Standard" toolbar, New, Save, Print, Help, etc
Last modified: 2007-10-27 09:11:44 UTC
I'd like to have a standard toolbar in Dia. I thought I might add it myself but I didn't get around to it so I'm filing this request instead and it should be a relatively easy way for someone to get into Dia. It would most likely include buttons for: New, Save, Print, (Undo, Redo, Copy, Cut, Paste, (Duplicate?)) Help. (maybe also Zoom? I'd rather have a few small toolbars but as far as I rememeber GTK toolbars dont allow you to put two toolbars in the same row) It would of course be optional like most toolbars with a menu item to show/hide it. I believe this would make Dia more consistant with Gnome and easier to use for beginners and hopefully without bothering existing users.
Anyone is looking at it?
Not really, help is always extremely welcome (patches, translations, more shapes, anything at all). Dia development progresses slowly but surely, any bits and peices you care to add would be appreciated, ideas borrowed from other programs are very welcome.
I was surprised to find out, a couple of months ago when I first played with MS Visio a bit (don't worry, I don't use regularly, only when I need to edit visio files some people give me), to find out that Visio's interface is _nothing_ like Dia. Wasn't Dia supposed to have been inspired by Visio? Then why so different interface? IMHO, not only there should be a toolbar for copy/paste/save, etc., but also another toolbar, or maybe a horizontal pane like in Visio, with the list of objects at the left. Now _that_ would be a quantum leap in usability for Dia.
The easiest way to explain the concept of Dia has always been to compare it to Visio but the users interface has not been heavily influenced by visio. I did corner Alex Larson (or was it James Henstridge?) and ask him what on earth he was thinking copying the gimp interface and his response was roughly that it seemed like a good idea at the time (without in any way conceding it was not still a good idea he just didn't want to dicuss it further and I didn't press the matter). For better or for worse the gimp and CSDI had a massive influence on many gtk applications, particularly graphics applications like Dia and Sodipodi. bumped version number to 0.94, optimistically added this as a 1.0 target in an effort to motivate myself to add it (but for now I have some docs to finish).
Dia is inspired by Visio in the sense that it manages connected objects in a smart way. It's not trying to be a Visio copy.
Why not share icons between Inkscape, Gimp and Dia where appropriate? It would give the GNOME graphics / design apps a more consistent look-and-feel.
IMO this is not a matter of selecting icons, but if the feature is desired at all (maybe also from someone actually being able to write the code for it ;-). At least I like Dia to not waste precious screen estate for 'sugar' like a per diagram menu or toolbar ...
Where stock GTK Icons exist they will be used. If you can get GTK to provide more stock icons for the kinds of things shared across all kinds of drawing applications that would be great. If you have not already give Inkscape a try. It does a good job of bringing lots of functionality forward and making it easier to find. Dia is a great program with lots of functionality and I'm convinced that users would enjoy it if the functionality presented in a more user friendly way. This feature is harmless and it would be optional and it is not targetted at experienced developers (like Hans). I'm sure in the past the people who were happy with the right click menu felt the menubar as unnecessary but it makes Dia easier to use for beginners. > maybe also from someone actually being able to write the code for it That's not nice (even if you put a smiley at the end of it). Given enough time (lots and lots of time) I will be able to write the code for it, but I added the easy-fix keyword because I knew it would be easy t will be
There's two parts to this feature: Getting appropriate icons for the actions, and coding it in such a way that debugging and maintaining won't be a pain. Ideally, I woud like to be able to just take menu items into a toolbar and have no more code about it that defining which menu items go into the default toolbars. The GtkToolBar widget does not seem to cooperate with the menus in any way, so it would require more code or another library (perhaps Gnome).
You should really consider using the GtkUIManager API. Almost everything else is deprecated already...
Yeah, just using modern gtk+ API should help: http://developer.gnome.org/doc/API/2.0/gtk/Actions.html [The GIMP 2.2 is relying on it so it should be quite useable, if anyone is interested to put work into it;]
It does look very nice, I've been thinking along the lines of Actions for a while. I don't think I want to change it before 0.95 (unless a working patch magically appears:), but it would be good for 0.96. If, that is, it is as simple as it looks.
(In reply to comment #0) [...] > It would most likely include buttons for: > New, Save, Print, (Undo, Redo, Copy, Cut, Paste, (Duplicate?)) Help. > > (maybe also Zoom? I'd rather have a few small toolbars but as far as I > rememeber GTK toolbars dont allow you to put two toolbars in the same row) > > It would of course be optional like most toolbars with a menu item to > show/hide it. [...] Alan, it would be helpful if you could provide a mockup or a list of what toolbars/items you would like to have. I'm tempted to look at that.
0.96 is now wrapping up, and no moves have been made on this. Too big to do as a bugfix, postponing to next version.
In the "integrated UI" in current SVN, there are load/save and zoom icons in toolbar. Adding a few more standard ones. If this is to be useable on small screens, they will have to be togglable in groups.