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I can speak for Dia...I found it (a year ago) to be fairly worthless in a
Corp. environment. Decent free tool, but for most users the tools in Open
Office are far above Dia.
Gimp? Never use it...Photoshop is my Viking!
I often present my ideas as Mind Maps...they make me look all intellectual
AND creative!
On Fri, Nov 21, 2008 at 9:24 AM, McLauchlan, Kevin <
Kevin -dot- McLauchlan -at- safenet-inc -dot- com> wrote:
> I used to use Visio to create stuff, but haven't for a while.
>
> I still use it to accept drawings (of various things) from other people
> in the company and clean those up for my customer-docs purposes - mostly
> trimming stuff out.
>
>
>
> I was browsing for a free Visio substitute (with little luck - none seem
> to handle Visio's native format files) and stumbled across a few other
> things.
>
>
>
> Has anybody successfully used Dia or some other substitute in a work
> environment? Is there a way - other than persuading the originators to
> save in a non-default format (not always easy if the originator is no
> longer a fellow employee...) - to get Visio drawings in a format that
> can be manipulated by Dia or by other substitute apps? When I say
> successfully, I mean that you are still using it by preference.
>
>
>
>
>
> For non-vector graphic stuff, has anybody had any joy from Paint.NET?
> The GIMP is kinda overkill for the type of bitmap/photo/image tickling
> that I usually perform, so I'm looking for lightweight alternatives and
> that one was mentioned.
>
>
>
>
>
> By the way, we've had conversations in this list in which some folks are
> adamant that one should pick a terminology and stick with it throughout
> one's customer documentation. Others think it's a good idea to include
> alternative terms, so that you reach a wider audience... or don't
> alienate the audience you've got. While Googling Paint.NET, I saw
> search-hit summary descriptions of the same program as:
>
>
>
> - Raster graphics editing program
>
> - Image and photo manipulation software
>
> - Free image editor
>
> - Bitmap editing program
>
> - MS Paint-like program
>
>
>
> I think I might side with the people who would at least repeat as many
> different terms as we know to indicate our products and the operations
> they perform, etc. Not randomly, but more frequently than just a list of
> equivalences buried in the front-matter of a User Guide (what's the
> front-matter of a Help System, anyway).
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> - Kevin
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
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