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List:       koffice-devel
Subject:    Re: Kivio Stencil sets  and KSpread changes (Ariya look)
From:       Eva Brucherseifer <eva () kde ! org>
Date:       2002-03-27 7:55:41
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> WRT Dia, I've to take a look first, it's been quite a long time since the
> last time I touched Dia.
>
> Another possibilty would be creating each shape in the stencils from SVG
> files (or if you have WMF, convert it first, best using StarOffice). This
> can even be automated using Perl/Python scripts (despite the fact that I
> almost know nothing about creating scripts).
>
> IMHO the big problem is not _how_ to create the stencils because I hope we
> can tackle this without really big effort. From my POV, the problem is
> _who_ will do the stencils itself. I am no artist and even cannot draw a
> relatively simple shape well so it must be someone else :-) Anyway, if
> anyone expericend with this vector graphics and s/he could do some shapes
> and export them to SVG (perhaps using Karbon?), I'm willing to convert it
> to Kivio stencils.
>

As a regular user of dia (who is willing to switch to kivio as  soon as it can 
do what I need) I'd like throw in some more cents ;-)
What I use dia mainly for is UML and that is, because the dialogs coming with 
the uml stencils are quit good. I think, creating the picture of a stencil is 
a rather small problem, but having dialogs with them is rather complicated 
and maybe needs a special approach, esp. if you want to make it easy to add 
more stencils.

Here are 2 ideas I have:
1)
Use QTs widget factory and some vector drawing. You would use placeholder 
strings in the graphic and the same placeholder strings as variable names in 
the qt dialog. Kivio then parses the ui file (xml) searches for the 
placeholder strings and gets the data for the placeholder from the dialog. 
Non-programmers can then produce dialogs with the designer and draw stencils 
- they don't need to code. This way a lot of new stencils will pop up very 
soon ;-)
I didn't follow this thought to the end, so I am not sure, that it is really 
possible. Also I don't think that dynamical dialogs (like having an undefined 
number of methods in an UML representation of a class) are possible with such 
an approach.
 
2)
Create a plugin interface for the stencils so that people can write additional 
stencil sets. This way very advanced dialogs can be realized, but kivio 
doesn't get too large, since a user of stencils for electrical circuits 
wouldn't need to load the plugin for UML.

Just some thoughts... (without being able to help implementing, but 
volunteering to do heavy testing as a user)
eva 

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