xfig still state of the art?
Mon 2008-07-07 16:18
From time to time I have to draw a diagram. This excites me, I enjoy diagrams.
Back in university the way to draw a diagram for a report was either xfig or
to marking it up directly in latex. But they're oldskool there are
groovy new ways to draw diagrams these days. The state of the GUI
diagramming art seems to be either inkscape or dia.
Really? Well… I don't think so. While both are good in an attractive
sort of way, they also both suck. On my Ubuntu "hardy" machine I get SEGVs out
of inkscape every few minutes, not sure why and have no time to investigate.
As for dia, it is just plain lacking. In inkscape I can group objects
and resize the group, in dia a group of objects (even just rectangles) isn't
scalable! (Even xfig can do that.) So I have one option that breaks and is
unusable, and another that lacks essential features and is unusable! All I
want to do is draw some boxes with words in them, and maybe make them look
pretty.
So, I'm using xfig now. Clearly, it is the state of the art in Linux
diagramming. (And I'm oh so tempted to boot over to Windows and use Visio
sometimes.)
What else is there? If I want to draw some class diagrams, boxes and lines,
maybe even UML shudder, what do I use? A few apt-cache searches bring up
some candidates, but I just don't have time to play with them. I've got a
bloody diagram to draw! Go go xfig!
Inkscape is extremely promising, I'll maybe try it again in another year.
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2 Responses
I did use Inkscape for a similar purpose (on Ubuntu) around a year ago, it was fine then. The obvious (on the screen) fine-control of object position was the winning factor at the time. Inkscape, without the SEGV, is just what I want. But I'm using xfig for now.
I so hate being the other people. :(