2 ms·
I think one of the more insane things Microsoft have done is their product management of MS Visio. It became so insanely expensive my work started making us ap
by bjt12345 15d ago
I think one of the more insane things Microsoft have done is their product management of MS Visio.
It became so insanely expensive my work started making us apply for 3 month licenses until we gave up and found something else.
About 15 years ago my Industry was using MS Visio for every diagram.
But they updated the GUI entirely and nobody could be bothered with the new format.
Now people use DrawIO and MS Visio is forgotten.
- kown7 15d agoI don't know what you're doing and I feel all of your Visio pain, but have you tried typst?
- jadbox 15d agoI do like Typst, but Typst isn't really ideal for diagrams... you could use it that way but I don't think it's ideal. Mermaid or PlantUML are better/cleaner options.
- 0x1ch 15d agoAgreed. My resume and slides are all templated with Typst, but I can't be bothered trying UML languages to make diagrams that'll probably be referenced once or twice a year, if ever.
- ashton314 14d agoI am a deep enjoyer of Typst. I love it and I use it absolutely everywhere that I can. CeTZ is a really good package, but I still reach for a tool like Omnigraffle if I need to make a really complicated diagram.
- briangray 15d agoSimilar story. We moved to DrawIO desktop. I now also use it as a replacement for whiteboarding and have it open in most meetings.
- lopsotronic 15d agoAbout ten years ago I went with text-based graph description languages and haven't looked back[1]. One application of AI I have found useful is in the quick composition of graphs via text-based graph description languages: graphviz (the great granddaddy), mermaid.js, plantuml, and of course derivatives like WireViz and CircuiTikZ. A typical ask would be something like "generate a mermaid network diagram showing the relationships of all markup languages". It's surprisingly good. A neat trick you can do if writing in Asciidoc: conditional directives are pre-processor directives, which means they're interpreted before the graphing engine goes to work. So you can make art that has sections which can toggle on and off based on document variables (the Asciidoc lingo for these is "attributes" but using that word can be confusing for old XML hands). Very neat when you have a block diagram you want to reuse for lots of different configurations. [1] Unless I need 3d, in which case I'm afraid I like Blender a lot. Even more than Asciidoc.