Chapter 8. Customization
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## Chapter 8. Customization

## Customization

Dia can be changed in a few ways, allowing the user to make Dia fit more to their needs.

To change the behavior settings, select File->Preferences... from the Toolbox Menu Bar. This opens the Preferences dialog

The configurable properties in the User Interface tab are:

- Reset tools after create. If this button is checked then the buttons in the Toolbox will reset to the Modify Tool after being used once. If the button is not checked then the current tool will stick until another tool is chosen, which is useful if you want to draw lots many shapes using the same tool over and over again.

- Compress saved files, provides the option to have Dia XML files compressed into much smaller files using gzip or to leave the Dia XML files as plain text so that they can be more easily edited using other software.

- Reverse dragging selects intersecting objects, means that you can create selections that only need to cover part of the object you want to select whereas normally you need to create a selection around the whole of the object you want to select. Reverse dragging means creating a selection by dragging up and to the left from the point you started your selection, as opposed to creating a selection by dragging down and to the right. This can be useful if you want to make very precise selections where there are many objects on the canvas.

- Number of undo levels customizes how many steps that the undo tool remembers. Higher numbers let the user go back more steps to fix an error, but take up more memory. Setting the undo level to zero does not turn off undo, it gives infinite undo (which means it uses as much of the available computer memory as possible).

- Recent Documents list size allows you to set how many items will be shown in the Recent Documents section of the File menu.

- Use menu bar allows you to have a menu bar at the top of each Diagram window instead needing to right click to access the menus. With the menu bar enabled you can access the object context menu by right clicking (instead of middle clicking, which is essential for users that do not have a three button mouse).

- Keep tool box on top of diagram windows ensures that the Toolbox windows is always in front of all the diagram windows which makes it easier to keep track of and have quick access to the tool at all times.

- Width controls the width, in pixels, of a new diagram.

- Height controls the height, in pixels, of a new diagram.

- Magnify sets a multiplier that controls the default zoom level of a new diagram.

- Snap To makes object edges attract to where the grid lines intersect. This makes it easier for the user to align objects, as separate objects snap to the same line.

- X Size lets the user set a multiplier which sets how far the horizontal grid lines are from each other.

- Y Size lets the user set a multiplier which sets how far the vertical grid lines are from each other.

- Colour sets the display colour of the grid lines.

- Page Breaks are lines that indicate where the page edges will be when you print out your diagram.

After you have made all the changes you want, click on OK to apply the changes and close the Preferences dialog. To cancel the changes and return to previous values, click the Close button. You may preview the effect of your changes using the Apply button.

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