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First - Thank you! to Bart S. for Dia Portable. I have started using it quite a bit, and it is a blessing to have available.
I was wondering if there is an update for DiaShapesPortable coming? The current version of Dia Shapes is 0.2.1 - and the last portable version was DiashapesPortable_0.0.1.paf.
Grant
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Diashapes 0.0.1 works with versions of Dia = 0.2.0), which requires the .NET framework. At the moment all .NET applications aren't considered portable and thus Diashapes Portable 0.2.1 isn't planned.
Right now, Diashapes Portable is dead, but maybe an upcoming libxml2.dll will revive it someday.
Thanks for the explanation Bart....
I had used Diashapes Portable only because it was available when I downloaded Dia Portable itself. So, I had never read the info on the Shapes pages themselves.
After reading your explanation, I went and looked to see what Diashapes was actually doing. Ha! - Who needs the dumb thing?! - If there were a couple of hundred shape libraries that I wanted, then Diashapes would be really nice. But since all it does it automate the download and the unzip of the few shape libraries that are available - well, that is something I think I can manage manually...
Thanks again for Dia Portable!
Grant
and welcome here at PortableApps.com!
Well, Diashapes makes life easier for unexperienced users. And the more users share their shape libraries the more useful gets Diashapes (and Dia).
Bart.S, have you thought about taking all available shape libraries at the time of each Dia release and making it available as an add-on? That would help people easily get shapes and bypass the need for DiaShapes. Even if they add shapes they don't need, they're small enough that it shouldn't matter. Or would it clutter up Dia having so many shapes you don't need installed?
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
Diashapes Portable downloads and installs shapes into the user settings directory (Data\settings\... by default). Dia Portable and Diashapes Portable both support custom directories for settings and app itself. An add-on installer would need too much custom code to work properly. And no, I don't drop support for custom directories in Dia Portable.
The add-on could work as is. Anyone who wants to get customizy would be on their own, as they have always been. Since custom directories can't be upgraded by the installer anyway and won't work with the platform's updater either, it's not a big deal. It's an exceedingly small minority (and getting smaller) and they're used to having to manually do everything. So, there's no real reason not to do an installer for it. The EULA could be the credits for it, listing out the shapes and authors. And you could update it each time you update Dia. Or maybe every 3 months otherwise if there are new shapes to add.
While you can continue to support custom directories in your launcher, since we don't support it at the platform, format or installer level, very few people will use it. And those that do will need to manually install the shapes add-on to somewhere else and then move all the bits into their customized Dia install, which is the exact same thing they need to do when they upgrade Dia anyway, so it's no extra work on their end.
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
adding files to Data\... isn't possible without custom code.
And why wasting time for an add-on? It's quite easy to install manually shape packages and that's well documented too.
PA.c Plugin/AddOn installers do include Data (unlike PA.c standard installers).
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
Anyway, I won't do it. I'm hoping for the revival of Diashapes Portable.
Plugin installers have always supported Data.
It won't be revived as is, since it's .NET. We will be listed individual .NET apps eventually but they are all hidden by default unless the user wants to show them specifically (understanding that it won't work on most PCs in the wild, etc). The author won't be switching back to a non-.NET language, so for all intents and purposes, Diashapes Portable is pretty dead.
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
Diashapes 0.0.1 has the same features as 0.2.1. If an upcoming libxml2.dll fixes the current issues, Diashapes Portable 0.0.1 will live again. No need for 0.2.x.
Diashapes Portable 0.0.1 will work again with an upcoming Dia Portable release. It's compatible with the latest libxml2 library. Just tested.