[Ti] [OT] Visio, was Microsoft Office : PC versus Mac

[Paul Russell]

>Paul Russell wrote on 4/15/03 6:26 PM:
>
>>  The sad fact is that in the Windoze dominated world, people use Visio
>>  for embedded drawings within their Word docs. It's one of the worst
>>  drawing programs in the world, but it's what people use.
>
>Tell me Paul (and anyone else) what else would you use for making drawings
>of buildings, houses, yards and/or streets that is better to use then Visio
>that is in the same price range? It is one of only two Windows applications
>that I use. I only use it because I can't find a decent alternative. The
>templates, the ease of scaling a drawing, the ease of scaling each component
>to a specific size, the ease of annotating the drawing, etc. are all pretty
>nice to me. I've looked at the alternatives that have been made on this list
>in the past, and none of them have these features. If they did, I'd probably
>switch.
>
>Please, if you really think this is such a bad application, then give me
>alternatives that have the same features! Not only would I like to change if
>there is something better (on any platform), but I'd like to share the
>information with my clients.
>

The depressing thing about Visio is that no thought has gone into 
usability. Even venerable Mac drawing packages from the 1980's such 
as MacDraw were way better as far as usability is concerned. Here's a 
trivial example:

Create a new object, e.g. a square. Duplicate it. Move the duplicate 
to where you want it. Now do another duplicate. MacDraw will put the 
third object at the same relative displacement to
the second object as between the first and the second, i.e. you get 
three (or as many as you like) linearly distributed objects. This is 
great when you want a row of identical objects, all evenly spaced. 
Try this in Visio.

This is just one of many examples of the fundamental difference 
between a drawing package where usability has been thought about, and 
one which has just been thrown together by a bunch of programmers who 
probably never actually use the package.

I don't do much drawing these days, but when I do I use OmniGraffle 
on the Mac. Cheap and effective, but I gather not everybody is a fan 
of it.

Paul

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