[Sigia-l] visio feature improvements - why bother?

[Listera]

"Peter Picone" wrote:

> On another note, worrying about what is a "standard" makes no more sense
> than worrying about what is in "fashion".

In fashion, nobody forces you to wear any one particular brand. I've never
heard of a party where (specifically) wearing an Armani suit was mandatory.

> If you need someone else to tell you what to wear, eat, think, dress, or to do
> your work, then you are not in control of your craft.

Well, you managed to miss the entire point. I don't *need* anyone else to
tell me what to "wear, eat, think, dress, or to do my work". In fact I don't
*want* anyone to tell me what tools to use at all. That's what a proprietary
'standard' like Visio does: by pretending/projecting to be a 'standard' it
tries to exclude other choices. And that's the whole point: choices.

> Get on with it and use what makes you most effective without becoming a slave
> to, or trying to define standard/fashion...

You have a rather misguided notion of a (non-public) 'standard'. You, as a
user, don't get to define standards. Others define it for you so that you
are *forced* to use them. That's the whole commercial rationale behind a
'standard'.

On a rainy day, curl up with a mountain of press releases over the past five
years from Apple, Microsoft and Real, for instance, on whose product is the
emerging 'standard' in multimedia delivery. Do you really think they are
just mindlessly wasting their time writing this stuff?

> it will change next year anyway,

No, it won't and that's part of the problem. Many of the crappy apps have
been around for better part of a decade or longer.

> and whining about it serves no practical purpose  professional or otherwise.

That's naïve. Even if a single person thinks a bit more critically about the
tools they choose to use, keeps an open mind toward other choices, and gives
one fewer headcount to those peddling 'standards' it will be more than worth
it. This must be so, otherwise you wouldn't have bothered to whine about
whatever you are whining about.

Ziya
Nullius in Verba