[Novalug] Fwd: What makes Linux great... Now Visio OT
John B. Holmblad
jholmblad@aol.com
Thu Jun 19 13:08:30 EDT 2008
John,
re: icons, yes, in fact, I sometimes open Visio to "borrow" icons for
Powerpoint presentations.
I came to understand the power of Visio when I decided on my own,
without reading any documentation, to create a reasonably accurate (in
terms of measurements) lighting and structured wiring plan for a small
home renovation. It took me several iterations but by the time I was
finished I had a work product that the electrical contractor whom I
hired a) was able to work from, and b) became very interested in getting
the tool for themselves.
Best Regards,
John Holmblad
Televerage International
GSEC Gold, GCWN Gold, GAWN, GGSC-0100, NSA-IAM, NSA-IEM
Information security, telecommunications, and information technology
consulting
(M) 703 407 2278
(F) 703 620 5388
primary email address: jholmblad@aol.com
backup email address: jholmblad@verizon.net
John Meagher wrote:
> Hi John,
>
> oops! I created a Visio thread. Sorry.
> It may in fact work, for those who invest in it, but for me it was never
> worth it. I'm well aware that it has a lot of fans in the networking
> area, where I am, but I never understood why.
>
> I don't know of any open source alternative to Visio.
>
> Reasons--
> 1) Unlike anything you do in Office programs, last time I checked it
> doesn't work for the person you send it to unless you convert it or
> he/she has a viewer. Even if he can view it, he can't edit and return
> it. Powerpoint and Word work pretty well together.
>
> 2) I'm not a big believer in a complex symbols where a box with a few
> letters would suffice. I like design drawings that have only
> significant things in them. If you want nice icons, you can find them
> for Powerpoint in other peoples' drawings, get them from vendors, from
> google images, or in an emergency, manufacture them in Corel or Adobe.
> For sales-related things, I send them to a graphics person.
>
> 3) One big shortcoming of Powerpoint is the lack of good scaling
> features, but you can get around most of them with the grid. If you're
> good with it, it's very fast and the output is compact. It's possible to
> do very nice looking rack or network drawings with it.
>
> Regards,
>
> John
> On Wed, 2008-06-18 at 19:47 -0400, John B. Holmblad wrote:
>
>> John,
>>
>> re your comment
>>
>> "Visio, trash. "
>>
>>
>> I am a perpetual Visio noobie and I have to say that I have found the
>> product very useful if sometimes frustrating to figure out without
>> reference to a user guide. What is the opensource alternative to
>> Visio? Do you consider DIA to be such an alternative?
>>
>>
>> http://ostatic.com/165017-blog/dia-a-strong-open-source-answer-to-microsofts-visio
>>
>> Here by the way is one blog reader's commentary on Visio vs DIA:
>>
>> > 'm sorry - anybody that has worked intensely with Visio will
>> > agree that Dia is nowhere near Visio.
>> >
>> > Look even at this sentence from Dia's project website: "Dia
>> > is roughly inspired by the commercial Windows program
>> > 'Visio', though more geared towards informal diagrams for
>> > casual use."
>> >
>> > Dia is fugly, doesn't support Visio file formats etc.
>> >
>> > This is really sad because we have been looking at open
>> > source diagramming software to replace Visio in our company
>> > because Visio is quite expensive if you have to license it
>> > for everybody. But we just couldn't find a replacement.
>> >
>> > People either suggest Dia - which just wouldn't cut the
>> > mustard or some vector drawing program.
>> >
>> > I think there is space for a descent diagramming open source
>> > project. Preferable with lots of lgpl libraries so other
>> > non-diagramming programs can have diagramming capabilities
>> > added to them,
>> >
>>
>
>
>
>
>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://lists.firemountain.net/pipermail/novalug/attachments/20080619/fd4c7d69/attachment.htm>
More information about the Novalug
mailing list