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Since Dia is open source, there's no fixed plan for when what will be done, nor can we tell anybody to code specific parts. Thus the development tends to happen where people get annoyed enough with the current state that they do something about it. Which is fine. We (the maintainers) are happy to get contributions, however, we will not automatically add any patch we're sent. We would like potential contributors to take a look at our Dia/CodingGuidelines first and Dia/HowToSubmitPatches second, following these will dramatically increase your change of having your patch accepted.
Current state
We feel Dia is in a state where it can be actively used. Many features are implemented and the code is quite solid and mature. Please try it out and tell us what you think of it. Check out the code too, you might even want to contribute...
The file format is XML based since 0.30, so it's pretty easy to keep backwards compatible. We'll do my best to make new versions load older files, no guarantees the other way though.
We develop under i386 Linux (Ubuntu) and gtk+ 2.0, and it works for us (tm). Dia is known to run on several Unix variations, and Windows as well. If you have succesfully tried it on some other architecture, please tell us.
For those interested in helping out, or curious about what's currently going on, we try to keep up a page with Dia/CurrentDevelopment. For those who feel like adding something of their own, there's a page of Dia/PotentialDevelopment with features we'd like to get but don't have anyone looking at yet.
Development documentation
Generic information
Specific parts
Roadmap
The roadmap towards version 1.0 (as of version 0.96, end of 2006) is laid out below. Of course, since all the work is done by volunteers, it may turn out otherwise, but these are the areas that the maintainers feel should be focused on first.
0.96
- Better and faster text rendering. Object highlighting for user feedback. Rotation, at least an implementation in the renderers and some primitive interface. Visio import and export.
0.97
Changeable units. Better groups implementation. Move object up/down layer. Setting of multiple object properties. Modal text input system. Maybe update the UML properties box. Maybe use of TextLine instead of raw strings everywhere.
0.98
- Cleanup of UML properties. Setting properties for multiple objects properly. Export options should be in the export dialog.
1.0
- At some uncertain time, we will do a 1.0 release. Gearing up for this will include stability testing, memory leak closing, an API freeze (perhaps for an entire release) and more.
Other ideas bubbling around: OpenOffice.org and OmniGraffle file format support. Rotation, possibly just of text. LaTeX support in the form of in-diagram display of rendered LaTeX.
UML support
The UML support is quite extensive, all of the static structure diagram parts is done. In the future support for other kinds of UML diagrams will come.
The core UML objects are the only ones left that don't use the standard properties API, but rather defines their own GTK dialogs. This needs to change, and the only missing part is a property that handles arbitrary-length lists of properties.
For future work on UML, here's some links explaining UML: http://decomp.ulb.ac.be:9090/Courses/glp0506/06-UMLAndClasses.pdf
Network diagrams
Dia can be used to draw diagram of LANs and WANs. At the moment very few object usable for drawing these diagrams are implemented, there is more to come. Other diagram types
Dia currently also supports Entity-Relationship diagrams, Flow charts, Sybase database diagrams, electric circuit diagrams, GRAFCET, IDEF0, and much more.
Developing
Dia is designed to be very flexible. Diagram types are scanned for and loaded at runtime from dynamic libraries. In the future we hope many different kinds of diagram types will exist. Things like JSP diagrams, block diagrams, organization charts, whatever. If you want to help with this, please contact us.
Get the latest sources from Subversion repository (SVN).
Gnome has moved from CVS to SVN and although older versions of Dia are available from CVS you should use Subversions to access the latest version.
You can always get the latest development version from the gnome svn tree in the 'dia' module. If you want to help out with the development of Dia, please use this version.
You can check out a copy of the sources by typing svn checkout http://svn.gnome.org/svn/dia. (This might take a while.)
After you have done this you can always check whether you have modified (your local copy of) the sources by typing svn status while standing in the directory where the dia sources reside, and you can update them by typing svn update.
You can always browse the latest sources with bonsai or lxr. In the ChangeLog you can see all the recent developments. Getting recent snapshots via HTTP
Snapshots are generated daily by the Dia ChangeLog Daemon and stored here: http://www.raeder.dk/~larsrc/Dia/snapshots.
Google Summer of Code
I missed the deadline for submit some project ideas to the 2007 Google Summer of Code. For next years SoC, here are the ideas:
Rotation (maybe with scaling, too)
Mailinglist
There is a mailing list dedicated to discussions about the design, development and usage of Dia. You can subscribe by filling out the form at the dia-list pages.
Be warned that due to recent spam activity, mails sent by non-subscribers may take a while to be okayed. It's a very good idea to subscribe at least as long as your subject is being discussed.
If you want to help out with Dia or discuss it's development, please use the list so that all interested people can take part in the discussion.
The mailing list is archived at http://mail.gnome.org/archives/dia-list/ and (this one has some older mails too) http://www.mail-archive.com/dia-list@lysator.liu.se/. Bugs
We use Bugzilla to track our bugs. If you have found a bug, and don't see it in the list of all Dia bugs (open or closed), please do report it.
Authors
This program was originally programmed by Alexander Larsson, alla@lysator.liu.se. The current maintainers are Lars Clausen and Hans Breuer. Steffen Macke maintain the Win32 installer.s
The following persons have in some way contributed:
- James Henstridge (james at daa.com.au)
- Jerome Abela (abela at solsoft.fr)
- Hans Breuer (hans at breuer.org)
- Emmanuel Briot (briot at volga.gnat.com)
- Fredrik Hallenberg (hallon at debian.org)
- Francis J. Lacoste (francis at contre.com)
Steffen Macke (sdteffen at gmail.com)
- M. C. Nelson (mcn at mani.kobayashimaru.org)
- Jacek Pliszka (Jacek at Pliszka.fuw.edu.pl)
- Henk Jan Priester (hj at justcroft.com)
- Alejandro Aguilar Sierra (asierra at servidor.unam.mx)
- Hubert Figuière (hfiguiere at teaser.fr)
- Alexey Novodvorsky (aen at logic.ru)
- Patric Sung (phsung at ualberta.ca)
- Robert Young (robert at young.dsto.defence.gov.au)
- 田郷 明 (Akira TAGOH) (tagoh at redhat.com)
- Richard Rowell (rwrowell at bellsouth.net)
- Frank Gevaerts (frank.gevaerts at fks.be)
- M. C. Nelson (mcn at kobayashimaru.org)
- Matthieu Sozeau (mattam at netcourrier.com)
- Xing Wang (quixon at gnuchina.org)
- Andrew Ferrier (andrew at new-destiny.co.uk)
- Angus Ainslie (angusa at deltatee.com)
- Alan Horkan (horkana at tcd.ie)
- Martin Hans (opfinder at gmx.net)
Dia is documented by:
- Henry House (hajhouse at houseag.com)
- Judith Samson (judith at samsonsource.com)
- Kevin Breit (battery841 at mypad.com)
