[NTLUG:Discuss] Re: Seeking builder -- thanks for replies -- more on VM Ware

[Bryan J. Smith]

On Thu, 2004-12-09 at 07:27, lonny.dahl at verizon.com wrote:
> Why do companies not like to buy M$ Visio?  If they're buying the OS and M$
> Office, what problem would they have buying Visio?

I'm talking about they don't like the 199 reasons (the list price for
just "Standard").

> Not that I'm complaining or anything, but that seems rather inconsistent to me.

Yes, it does.  Companies are willing to pay a lot for Office, but not
complete the toolset.  Which is why I bring in Draw from OpenOffice.org
(and StarOffice if I work for an educator, which is free).

I do a _lot_ of large-scale technical documentation.  MS Word is the
absolute _worst_ thing for that.  As I've mentioned prior, I've even
called the Microsoft-staffed help desk at a Fortune 20 company who
admitted the MS Office manuals are written in Adobe FrameMaker because
it is a "better tool" for it.

But FrameMaker costs even more $$$ (well worth it IMHO), so they won't
buy it.  Then they complain when I use OpenOffice.org/StarOffice, but it
_does_ handle larger documents better.  It also converts to/from LaTeX
very, very nicely now.

> And is there an open source program to compete with Visio?  (This coming from
> a guy who remembers Visio before M$ bought it)

GNOMEOffice Dia was trying, but it's no where close.  TheKompany offers
(GPL?) Kivio in KDE, and template for it (still commercial add-ons?) 

StarOffice's Draw adds a bit in templates over OpenOffice.org's Draw. 
It's not nearly as complete, but it does the job for me.  The
"functionality" is definitely as capable (connections, layout, etc...
features), it's just the lack of common symbols, etc... and the 3rd
party integration/support (e.g., visual-language conversion).

<flammatory?>It's kinda like IntelliCAD compared to
AutoCAD.</flammatory>  The former is just as capable, but the latter has
the goodies you are used to along with the widespread, 3rd party support
in add-ons.


-- 
Bryan J. Smith                                 b.j.smith at ieee.org 
------------------------------------------------------------------ 
Beware of advocates who justify their preference not in terms of
what they like about their "choice," but what they did not like
about another option.  Such advocacy is more hurtful than helpful.