On Fri, May 27, 2005 at 10:31:21AM +0200, Rob Wilco wrote:
Hi,
I have followed he tutorials yesterday and have been very impressed with Inkscape.
I am trying to figure out how I could use it to make nice diagrams. I know Inkscape is not specificaly designed for that (I know Dia is) but I don't think I need a lot.
I've found that with Inkscape you can make much better _looking_ diagrams than is possible with dia, however it's much less convenient, since many things that are done automatically by dia have to be done more manually in Inkscape.
- Is it easy to make boxes that auto adjust its size to the text
contained in the box?
Unfortunately, no.
- I have two box shapes, and then I want to link them i a way I can
drag a box, the other box do not move but the path between the two adapts and stays linked to both shapes. How easy it is to do or emulate that?
It's not really feasible currently. Deep inside the code there is a 'linking' feature but there's no UI built for it. This is an area where if it is really important, then other drawing tools will be more suitable.
At worst, for the latter, I will use the grid and easily reconnects the boxes each time I move them (after all it just doubles the number of drags'n drops). As you see, I will be satisfied with tricky/unorthodox/creative ways to do those.
Yeah, that's what I normally do. By the way, be forewarned that there are two kinds of snapping in Inkscape - snap to point (what you will want) and snap to bounding box. The latter seems to be the default so you often will need to turn it off and turn snap by point on. Also, make sure to experiment around with the snap settings. It seems that the defaults are too "weak" for diagram drawing and some things don't snap easily, and I like to ratchet it up really high. Oh, and learn the '#' shortcut key for turning the grid on and off. :-)
- Would you say I am on the wrong way using Inkscape to do diagrams or
you yourself regularly make diagrams with Inkscape.
I regularly use Inkscape for diagrams, and like the results, however I am honest with folks that it's more work than other tools, and possibly too much extra work.
But here is a situation where my cautioning was wrong: About a year ago co-worker needed to make some diagrams for a technical paper she was writing, and asked about Inkscape. I showed her that it doesn't do the above stuff, and convinced her dia would be simpler, and she did her diagrams in it. However, when it came time to put the diagrams into the paper, she ran into all manner of issues. She found she needed to resize the items in the image, alter font sizes, control the png exporting (anti-aliasing, etc.), and adjust the line sizes, and had great difficulties doing these things in dia. For several of the diagrams she ended up redoing them in Inkscape, and even though it was a bit more work to draw, it was a cinch by comparison to make all the adjustments needed to get it to fit well with the paper.
So... Sometimes even though inkscape lacks the more handy diagramming features, it makes up for it with its scalability and flexibility. :-)
Bryce