[Sigia-l] RE: Diagraming Tools for IA [was: visio feature improvements]

[David Heller]

<< In your opinion, do you think Visio would bode well to have better
support for EPS and/or XML import/export? This could open up the choices the
field of IA has for tools. Or would you see this as not being that
important. >>

Funny you should ask that question. About a year or so ago (at least that is
the way it feels) before AIfIA got off the ground and Louis R. was trying to
set up the IA Infrastructure site, I spawned off an e-mail list for people
interested in starting a software project to take on the issue of what would
it mean to create a tool or set of tools for IA. Well, lets just say that
while the list still exists, it is not really going anywhere.

That being said, let me answer your questions more precisely.
EPS: I don't see eps support as so important to me. I might be a bit biased
b/c I never liked using Illustrator. I never understood it. Always preferred
photoshop and fireworks for my design tools. I see the power behind it
though, but don't see it as too relevant for IA. Now, the fact that Visio is
Vector based is invaluable. It does export (poorly) to EPS, and I can live
with it for what it is.

XML: I don't see this as an export or import question. I see this as a Web
Services question. Should another program be able to read the XML of a Visio
document and do something w/ that structured data? YES! A responding YES! Of
course, I can do a lot of this w/o XML today if I REALLY want and then
convert it to XML after I extract the queries I need, but that is a bit much
work.

To be brutally honest, where Visio fails for me is not so much in the two
areas that you are asking about. It is much simpler than that.

1. It isn't interactive enough. The hyperlinking function only goes so far.
I need more interactivity to build working prototypes in this environment so
that I'm not wasting my time here. For example you can hide and show objects
or groups of objects. (this is one of my favorite things about Norpath). The
widgets themselves don't have a runtime behavior. I can't really scroll a
listbox.

2. But lets for a moment assume that Visio is just about documenting. Its
templating facilities fall short. While backgrounding is useful, it is very
inefficient and doesn't allow for variations to be created. I would much
prefer something like dreamweaver's model of templates and library objects
being brought into visio

3. I would like an out of the box method for taking mapping documents and
converting them into page structure documents. So that my flowchart is now
ported to become a list of pages with actual properties of those pages used.

4. Something so simple to put in this tool is a latin text generator. 

Someone else mentioned the use of Flash for prototyping. I think that is
pretty cool for people who don't mind the environment and who can pick up
action scrpting well enough. But I depend on being able to print my
prototypes so that my engineers have specifications for their
implementations. (Printing is the one area where I feel Norpath failed,
unfortunately).

Anyway, this is enough for now. Hope this was helpful, Todd.

-- dave

David Heller
Sr. User Interface Designer
Documentum: The Leader in Enterprise Content Management
925.600.5636
 
david.heller at documentum.com
http://www.documentum.com/
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--"If it isn't useful, it will never be usable."