Tomboy report 582696

Trackers and robots were not kind with me in the past, they each have their own flurry of bugs, drawbacks and limitations, some even loose submissions at times. Some maintainers just go overboard with their tracker toys, they should play all their soul themselves, and give some rest to their users. The truth is that I learned to hate robots, I've been avoiding them for years (life is too short! ☺). Yet, Sandy insisted that I make an effort at using the Tomboy one, and since Sandy has been so nice to me, I'll comply and try again, once more. But I'll keep a copy of the submission on my side, at least for a good while, just in case!

Hi, Sandy. You see, I'm trying your robot! ☺

The Lier and Texte buttons (likely Link and Text in English) are fairly close to one another, and when doing massive editing, or being tired, or various other reasons, it may happen that I click on the wrong one: I highlight a word and then want to change font size or feature, but accidentally ask for a link instead. Now, if this happens to be a common word, I might have created many, many dead links (because I will end-up deleting the wrongly created note).

Undoubtedly, this is my error. Yet, a friendly tool should help me at not hurting myself too badly. So here is my suggestion, hoping it is affordable to do. If Tomboy could estimate, when I create a new note, how many links would be created from everywhere else in other notes to this new note, it could request prior user confirmation, whenever that number exceeds some threshold (five seems a reasonable value). As a consequence, creating a legitimate new link is likely to require no confirmation in practice, and creating a link over a common word is likely to request for a confirmation. If the link is wrong with fewer than five induced links, it would then be reasonably fast to use the Find links on this note from the newly created note to spot the links that will die, once the newly created note gets deleted.

The same confirmation might also be available whenever a dead link is resurrected. It is an easy error, clicking next to a dead link with the intent of erasing it and typing it again (non-dead this time), to accidentally click it instead, and to instantly destroy some patient prior work meant exactly to un-dead-ify multiple occurrences of that dead link at many other places.

Maybe that five would be too high a number for some users, and too low a number for others. It could be set from the Preferences window. Zero would imply unconditional confirmation, a high value would correspond to the actual behavior.

I presume that this suggestion would cover the main absolute source of spoiled time, in my experience of Tomboy so far. Hoping that you would look at it with a favorable eye!

Dia criticism

 Dia is a sophisticated editor for diagrams, which I tried many years ago, and a second time more recently. This tool is loved and cherished by many users, and directly available within most Linux distributions. Clicking on this logo yields you to the Dia site. However, this product did not leave me happy, and I explain why below.

A little while ago (a month maybe?), I needed to produce a few diagrams, and looked around for some tool of the right availability and size. I wanted it bundled for the few systems I use at work or at home, or if not, at least very easy to install. I refused to go overboard with UML, some tools being rich and complex, but not so usable outside UML — I was more attracted to eclectic tools. At the other hand, I did not want to go too simple, expecting a minimum of flexibility and rendering quality.

Dia seemed to fit the bill pretty well. I vaguely remember I tried it, years ago, and was not satisfied. Revisiting the documentation, it still looks attractive. Maybe I was too stubborn at the time to understand all benefits? Maybe the package evolved over the years, and I would see it differently now? So, I gave Dia a good and honest second try, studying it afresh with the most opened mind possible. I used it quite seriously, for many days and a few types of projects.

Reluctantly, I had to give up. It did not pass the reality test for me and did not work well. I realized my quest was not over, and that I had to seek for something else. In the end, I finally opted for Inkscape, which is surely less featured than Dia in its speciality: if one moves objects aroud, best still is to revise all arrows manually. Yet, Inkscape is more usable overall, so the pros and the cons counterbalance in practice. Also, I have the rather strong feeling that it is a good investment in the long run, so the learning effort is more productive.

The main problem with Dia, for me, has been stability. I can of course suffer a few bugs here and there and work around them, but in the Dia case, their pace of arrival or severity was too high for me. Many years ago, I would have fearlessly contacted maintainers and users groups to report all the problems, but experience taught me that this might be pretty time-consuming, and I'm not available enough to do all the research and tries which usually accompanies or follows such discussions.

I saved a few points which annoyed me with Dia. Time going by, these progressively fade in my memory. Yet, I'll list them here merely to remember a bit, and not be tempted to return there a third time ☺. I'm surely not seeking a systematic rebuttal or discussion. So if you are a Dia proponent, please do not take it too personnal: your comments are welcome, just do not push to convert me back…

• Saved .dia files are not equivalent after transport between different Dia versions, even for fairly simple works. One may not afford to loose work because one travels between computers, and it is unreasonnable to expect all to use the same Dia version at all times.
• Producing .png output produces it truncated, part of the diagram is missing.
• Producing .svg seems to be lacking elements. I suspected that layer order is not properly represented, and so, elements are spuriously hidden, but this is a mere hypothesis.
• Placing lines using other points than hot points is quite difficult, one has to fight with the mouse, even if the mouse usually does not win.
• When editing a text, it might spontaneously return to the center of the box where it has been initially introduced, and repositioning it many times becomes irritating.
• When working on two diagrams, any click in the toolbox raises the first diagram over the second, making it tedious to work on the second.
• If one uses Ctrl-E at start, this chooses %nan for a zoom value, the application then freezes.
• Starting the application, the F9 windows spuriously pops up, and I did not find how to prevent this.

P.S. - @burakbayramli says: Francois: What is your alternative to Dia? I am a user myself, and would love to hear about what's out there.  (I had a hard time reaching him, should try later)  I also had good comments from Sergio, should resume this all here.