Developers
Developers |
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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 (Debian) 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.
The currently envisioned roadmap for Dia 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.
Other ideas bubbling around: OpenOffice.org file format 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.
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.
Dia currently also supports Entity-Relationship diagrams, Flow charts, Sybase database diagrams, electric circuit diagrams, GRAFCET, IDEF0, and much more.
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.
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 co http://svn.gnome.org/svn/dia/trunk dia. To get a stable version you can use something like svn co http://svn.gnome.org/svn/dia/branches/dia-0-95 dia-0-95
After you have done this you can always update your sources by typing svn update when standing in the directory where the dia sources reside.
You can always browse the latest sources with viewcvs. In the ChangeLog you can see all the recent developments.
Snapshots are generated daily by the Dia ChangeLog Daemon and stored here: http://www.raeder.dk/~larsrc/Dia/snapshots.
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/.
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.
This program was originally programmed by Alexander Larsson, alla@lysator.liu.se. The current maintainers are Cyrille Chépélov and Lars Clausen. Hans Breuer and Steffen Macke maintain the Win32 port.
The following persons have in some way contributed:
Dia is documented by: