Dia

Network Shapes for Dia

I quite like the Dia program to write network shapes. It’s no Visio, but it does the job quite well. The problem is there were no good shapes for designing networks, so I made my own.

Now the dia shape export tool has lots of problems and you WILL be disappointed with what it does, but it is a good start. I find that I get the general shape done in dia, then export, then use vim to finish it off. The main two problems are you get a million or so connection points and every box and polyshape has a thick outline; due to the fact that the line and the shape are different lines in the xml (they should be one).

Screenshot

Here is an example of the shapes I’ve already built. I’m not 100% happy with them but they’re a good start. I’ll do some more cleaning up soon and most likely put some outline around the white bits.

Getting the shapes

I’ve tarred up the shapes and put them here.

I’d appreciate any feedback about them, or suggestions on how to make them better. I was toying with the idea of shrinking them down to about half their size, for example.