[sclug] drawing network diagrams?

[John Stumbles]

ed wrote:
> On Sat, 22 Jul 2006 00:32:14 +0100
> John Stumbles <john at stumbles.org.uk> wrote:

>>OK, that seems to be a bug(?) in the Smart Links function: I had
>>Slide selected.
>>
>>If I select Move the link stays glued to its objects at both ends and 
>>stretches or shrings as necessary.
>>
>>But with Slide selected the X ordinate of the left end of the line
>>stays with the point it was attached to on the other object but the Y
>>ord stays at the same offset from its right hand end
> 
> 
> It sounds as though the line is not linked to both objects.

Pretty sure it is linked, since the boxes marking the end points of the 
line and the corner of the object to which I connect it both disappear 
when I get them spot on.

  When you
> move the object, do you have the line selected too?

Not sure: xfig seems to have a quite different way of doing things than 
visio/dia/inkscape etc. In those you have a select tool to select 
objects to work with, then apply an operation to the selected object[s] 
e.g. drag to move. With xfig when I move an object I click the Move 
objects button then click on the object I want to move, so I'm only 
clicking on the single object I'm trying to move and not the connecting 
line as well.

However I think the 'bug' I described is perhaps a 'feature' :-)
If I connect 2 objects by a line comprising more than one segment e.g.

   []----[]
    |    |  /\
    |  A | /a \b
   []----+     \
                \
                 +------[]
                 |      |
                 |  B   |
                 |      |
                []------[]

and move object B (with Smart Links set to Slide) then line segment 'b' 
moves as I described (X stays constant, Y stays same ofset from B's Y 
position) until I click again to confirm B's new position whereupon line 
segement 'a' adjusts to meet the new position of 'b'.

(I guess maybe what's happening in the code is that object B is telling 
its attached line segment how to move while B is being dragged around, 
then when B is finally positioned line segment 'b' tells what's attached 
to the other end to adjust to meet it. This would work where what's 
attached is another line segment but doesn't work where what's attached 
is an object which doesn't know how to adjust to meet.)

> Which version of dia are you using, 0.94 here. 

3.2 patchlevel 5-alpha5 (Protocol 3.2) which is what I got as the 
package with debian stable (sarge)

-- 
John Stumbles