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

[Listera]

"Peter Picone" wrote:

>> 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.
> 
> Exactly, no one is forced to be fashionable.

If you work in a corporate or educational setting, you pretty much use the
tools you are given. If you want to work with that corporation you exchange
files based on the formats they tell you to use. If you don't, you don't get
to work there. Not very complicated. Next time you apply for a job with a
requirement to use Visio, I'd love to see you give the HR guy the "no one is
forced to be fashionable" spiel. That would be funny.
 
> Why are you calling it a "proprietary standard"?

Frankly, I can't tell if you are too naïve or too idealistic. Like WMP,
Office or IE, it's a standard by and for Microsoft. The best you can do is
to reverse engineer the file format and try to duplicate functionality.
There are other 'standards' widely used like Java, Flash PDF, etc., that are
owned by a single company, but with published/public file formats/API that
even their closest competitors get to adopt: PDF/Quark, Flash/Adobe, etc.
Not so with many/most MS products.

> Last I heard it was still an off-the-shelf tool that you had an option of
> purchasing or leaving on the shelf?

The vast majority of corporate/educational users don't get to choose their
own software. Software is site-licensed by the hundreds/thousands. You use
what has been 'standardized' and supported by IT at your organization.

>  Also, no product pretends to be a standard...

At this point, I give up.

Ziya
Nullius in Verba