[cad-linux] Linux Drawing Viewer status and plans

Keith,

I am finally getting caught up with the E-mails over the holidays.  As 
requested here is the status of the program and my future plans.

Current Status:
The program can open and view an AutoCad drawing (in model space) created up 
to A2k.  After viewing the drawing you can save it to a DWG or DXF file (any 
version 2.5 to 2000), plus you can write a snap shot of it as a BMP or XPM 
file.  While viewing there is pan and zoom (in, out, extents, center, window, 
and previous) capability plus you can set the view direction in 3D space 
using a dynamic dialog box. Also included is a rudimentary help system. The 
program will search for and load X-REFS and AutoCad SHX files to display speci
al fonts (at least it works with the Big Fonts I have on my system).

Future Items: (in the order I plan to work on them) :
1)  I want to get a web home page up at Source Forge for the Viewer.  This is 
one of the places where I plan to provide a link to this mailing list (the 
other is in the project discussion forum).    

2)  I want to incorporate the new icons you sent into the tool bars, plus I 
want to implement the 3D hot keys you requested.  I also would like to be 
able to toggle from paper space views to model space views (and back again).  


3)  I then want to revise the program as necessary to use the OD libraries 
which should become available 4 to 6 weeks after Acad drops ACAD02 on the 
market.  Viewer currently uses the 2.005 OD libraries which are several 
versions behind.  This should bring the program up to date with the latest 
from Open Drawing.

4)  I would like to have some sort of plot capability incorporated.

5)  There seems to be some interest in saving drawings as PDF format and I 
would like to try that also.

6)  If I get to this point it is logical to try to implement some simple 
editing commands.


I am confident that I'll get 1-3 done, after that it really depends upon user 
feed back.  If there seems to be an interest out there (and people are using 
the program) I am sure that I'll keep plugging away at it.   By the time I 
get to #6 I am going to need some other programming help though.  Even if the 
help is not coding I will, at the very least, need to bounce some ideas off 
of people as to what is a computationally efficient scheme that can be used 
to link a vector on the screen to a specific entity inside the drawing data 
base. You really can't edit until you answer that basic question.  The OD 
people have mentioned once or twice that they MAY make this capability part 
of some future release, but I gather it is more of a wish list item than 
something with which we can hang our hats on.       
 

I hope this gives you the information you need.  This is slightly 
embarrassing to ask, but what exactly is the address of your web page?  I 
knew that you had a page somewhere with snap shots of Linux Cad programs 
displayed (and I am pretty sure I even checked it out once), but I don't have 
the address written down anywhere.  

Andy

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