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Dia

Kevin Breit

Henry House

Judith Samson

Alan Horkan

Thomas Harding

Mark Dexter

Hans Breuer

This is version 0.97.2 of the Dia manual.

Copyright © 2004, 2009 Kevin Breit, Henry House, Judith Samson, Alan Horkan, Mark Dexter

Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.1 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation with no Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover Texts. You may obtain a copy of the GNU Free Documentation License from the Free Software Foundation by visiting their Web site or by writing to: Free Software Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place - Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307, USA.

Many of the names used by companies to distinguish their products and services are claimed as trademarks. Where those names appear in any GNOME documentation, and those trademarks are made aware to the members of the GNOME Documentation Project, the names have been printed in caps or initial caps.

Revision History
Revision 0.97+git	2011-04-25	hb
Work in progress for dia-0-98
Revision 0.97.2	2011-04-25	hb
Actually describing noteable new features/behaviour of dia-0-97.x
Revision 0.97.0	2009-02-20	sdteffen
Bumping dates and revisions to show progress for 0.97 release
Revision 0.5-2	2008-05-27	HDG
dropping HTML entities, making dia-1.xml independant from dia-cmdline.xml, dropping file extension from graphics

Table of Contents

1. Introduction

1.1. Introduction
1.2. New in this version

2. Quickstart

2.1. What Can You Do?
2.2. Starting Dia
2.3. Creating a Canvas
2.4. Making a Diagram
2.5. Saving and Printing Your Diagram
2.6. Running Dia From the Command Line
2.7. Who Does Dia Appeal To?

3. The Canvas

3.1. Canvas Introduction
3.2. Grid Lines
3.3. Rulers
3.4. Background Color
3.5. Zooming
3.6. Other View Menu Options
3.7. Undo and Redo

4. Objects and the Toolbox

4.1. Dia Toolbox Overview

4.1.1. Modify Control
4.1.2. Textedit Control
4.1.3. Magnify Control
4.1.4. Scroll Control
4.1.5. Basic Objects
4.1.6. Special Objects
4.1.7. Default Color, Line Width, and Line Style

4.2. Using Objects

4.2.1. Adding Objects
4.2.2. Moving Objects
4.2.3. Resizing Objects
4.2.4. Deleting Objects
4.2.5. Connecting Objects With Lines
4.2.6. Entering Text
4.2.7. Aligning Objects
4.2.8. Grouping Objects

4.3. Object Properties

4.3.1. Sources of Default Properties
4.3.2. Changing Object Properties

4.4. Colors

4.4.1. Select Color Box

4.5. Diagram Tree

4.5.1. Opening the Diagram Tree
4.5.2. Working With the Diagram Tree

5. Basic Objects

5.1. Basic Objects Introduction

5.1.1. Text
5.1.2. Box
5.1.3. Ellipse
5.1.4. Polygon
5.1.5. Beziergon
5.1.6. Line
5.1.7. Arc
5.1.8. Zigzagline
5.1.9. Polyline
5.1.10. Bezierline
5.1.11. Line Properties
5.1.12. Image
5.1.13. Outline

6. Special Objects

6.1. Special Objects

6.1.1. Special Object Categories
6.1.2. Organizing Sheets and Objects

7. Selecting Objects

7.1. Selection Introduction

7.2. How To Select Objects

7.2.1. Selecting a Single Object
7.2.2. Deselecting Objects
7.2.3. Selecting Multiple Objects

7.3. Working With Selected Objects

7.3.1. Operations on All Selected Objects

8. Loading and Saving Diagrams

8.1. Loading and Saving Introduction

8.2. File Types

8.2.1. Dia Native Diagram Files
8.2.2. Import/Export Formats
8.2.3. Exporting Only Formats

9. Customization

9.1. Preferences Dialog

9.1.1. User Interface
9.1.2. Diagram Defaults
9.1.3. View Defaults
9.1.4. File export favorites
9.1.5. Grid Lines

10. Managing Layers

10.1. Introduction to Layers

10.2. Managing Layers Basics

10.2.1. Create a New Layer
10.2.2. Selecting Layers
10.2.3. Ordering Layers
10.2.4. Deleting Layers
10.2.5. Renaming Layers

10.3. Viewing Layers

11. Custom Shape Module

11.1. Custom-shape Module introduction

11.2. Shapes

11.3. The Shape Description

11.3.1. Style attribute
11.3.2. Recognised drawing elements

11.4. Shapes in Shapes aka. Subshapes

11.5. Extented Attributes

11.6. The Sheet description

11.7. How Dia helps to create and manage sheets and shapes.

11.8. Design Notes

12. Dia command line

12.1. Introduction
12.2. Command line manual

13. Authors

14. License

14.1. License

List of Figures

1.1. Sample Flowchart Diagram
2.1. Sample Network Diagram
2.2. Dia tabbed diagramming
2.3. Dia Startup
3.1. Diagram / Properties / Grid
3.2. Snap-To-Grid Toggle Button
3.3. Ruler With Arrows Circled in Red
3.4. Changing Background Color
3.5. Toolbox Magnify
3.6. Canvas Zoom
3.7. View Menu Zoom Options
3.8. View Menu
4.1. Dia Toolbox
4.2. Modify Control
4.3. Textedit Control
4.4. Magnify Control
4.5. Scroll Control
4.6. Special Objects
4.7. Default Color, Line Width, and Line Style
4.8. Restore Default Colors Button
4.9. Reverse Colors Button
4.10. Default Line Width
4.11. Arrow and Line Style
4.12. Object Handles
4.13. Line Handles
4.14. Line Connected
4.15. Fixed Connection Point
4.16. Middle Connection Point
4.17. Edit Menu Text Commands
4.18. Objects / Align Options
4.19. Before Left, Center, Right Align
4.20. Align Left
4.21. Align Center
4.22. Align Right
4.23. Before Top, Middle, Bottom Align
4.24. Align Top
4.25. Align Middle
4.26. Align Bottom
4.27. Before Spread Out Horizontally
4.28. After Spread Out Horizontally
4.29. Before Spread Out Vertically
4.30. After Spread Out Vertically
4.31. Align / Adjacent
4.32. Align / Stacked
4.33. Before Align Connected
4.34. After Align Connected
4.35. Before and After Group Create
4.36. Default Text Properties
4.37. Default Box Properties
4.38. Color Listbox
4.39. Select Color Box
4.40. Diagram Tree
5.1. Basic Objects
5.2. Zigzagline Right-Click Menu
5.3. Polyline Right-Click Menu
5.4. Bezierline Right-Click Menu
5.5. Standard Line Properties
5.6. Line Styles
5.7. Line Caps
5.8. Line Arrows
5.9. Image
6.1. Assorted
6.2. Cisco - Computer
6.3. Cisco - Misc
6.4. Cisco - Network
6.5. Cisco - Switch
6.6. Cisco - Telephony
6.7. Flowchart
6.8. Misc
6.9. Network
6.10. UML
6.11. UML Class Properties
6.12. Sheets and Objects
7.1. Selected Object
7.2. Select By Area Example
7.3. Select Menu
9.1. User Interface
9.2. Diagram Defaults
9.3. View Defaults
9.4. File export favorites
9.5. Grid Lines

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		Chapter 1. Introduction