[Sigia-l] Sigh... What happened to this list? (Was: Visio feature improvements)

[Stig V Andersen DR-INTERAKTIV]

Dear list members,
 
This thread was the drop that filled the glass for me! 
 
Some time ago this was a great forum for relevant IA discussions and
knowledge sharing. However - the amount of posts, disputatious and
argumentative to the point of the meaningless (for the majority of list
members), have become way too high. Sadly, as I don't know where else to
turn.
 
Can anyone suggest a living community with acctual IA relevans? I'll
unsubscribe shortly.
 
Regards
Stig Andersen
Danish Broadcasting Corporation
stan at dr.dk <mailto:stan at dr.dk> 

"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