Version: KOffice2, Beta7 (r938334) (using Devel) OS: Linux Installed from: Compiled sources (From Bugsquad KOfficeDay2) Using "Tie" shapes is currently a little unintuitive as you have to add the shape before you can use it to link other shapes. It would be preferable if adding a tie and linking two shapes with it could be done in just one step. (Please reassign this bug to the correct product/component. I couldn't figure out what to report it against.)
The current way works good for some people. Its a bit of a trick for others. I think we should research alternative methods for connecting shapes that are discoverable for the latter group. I do think we can have more than one way of connecting shapes without problems. I suggest to have a connections-tool which allows you to just click on shape edges and that creates the connections. One click on edge one, one click on edge two and voila, a connection.
The unintuitive part isn't having to select a connection shape and drag it onto the canvas -- the world's most intuitive diagramming application, omnigraffle, does exactly that: select a connection shape, drag it on the canvas, grab one end, connect it, grab the other end, connect it. The thing is: this system is designed for a situation where you have more than connection shape. It looks weird because we currently have only one connection shape instead of a rich set of connection shapes; but compared to having a connection tool that allows you to connect two shapes & then select a connection shape from something, it's much more usable. What's wrong in koffice (apart from not having enough connection shapes) is that you need to double-click the shape so the path tool gets activated. Adding a connection tool would just mean that you need to select that tool. I think the default tool should allow the user to drag the endpoints to the right place. Additionally, we need much richer feedback for connection hotspots.
I completely agree with Boud. I was looking for exactly that today, how to drag that Tie shape in order to connect it, and I had to be told to double-click it, on irc. It should be done by the default tool so that double-clicking isn't necessary.
Thank you for your bug report or feature suggestion. The "KOffice" application suite is no longer maintained, and all tickets are now closed. We recommend to switch to the "Calligra" application suite, which has replacements for all unmaintained KOffice applications: - KWord was replaced with Calligra Words - KPlato was replaced with Calligra Plan For more information, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calligra_Suite (This is an automatic message from the KDE bug triaging team)