[Sigia-l] visio feature improvements

[David Heller]

Wait a second,

Visio is entirely programmable (not just scriptable). Through the VBA logic
you can definitely (if you are so inclined) create synchronization
functionality. To the XML parsted out of a Word doc or whatever other XML
source you might have. 

Now, the pixel support is not there b/c Visio is a paper tool, not a screen
tool. But you can use inches pretty darn well in visio out to .xxxx places.

Now don't get me wrong I have lots of problems with Visio, but remember that
this tool is multi-functional beyond the other tools in that it is as good
for wireframing a blueprint of a house as well as it can wireframe a web
page.

The major advantage of Visio is that it comes w/ windows GUI widgets and you
can create your own palette w/ your own completely programmable widgets. You
can even create a data source that is fetchable/queryable for custom
properties so you document can have a controlled vocabulary of its own.

Now, that being said almost all of this requires a pretty neato VB
programmer to do well, so most of it goes really unused by most of us on
this list. It can be done, but it is way too complex to do for the masses.

Visio was never intended to be a GUI/IA tool like it is today. Like the web
itself it is an expansion of a tool into an are not completely compatible
with its primary design purpose.

As for switching to a Mac just to use OmniGraffe. I wonder how many of us
could make that sale to our managers? Spend $3500 on a new computer (I use a
kick-ass laptop) + hundreds if not thousands on licenses for all the
software you need, just so you can use a piece of Mac software? Hmmm? Seems
a tad problematic to me. But hey that new software is only $100?

-- dave