[Ma-linux] Re: [Novalug] Open source visio file viewer

[craig]

Rob Sherwood wrote:
> On Tue, Feb 20, 2007 at 09:58:05AM -0500, craig wrote:
>   
>> And lyx to bind them all together.
>> For me at least, lyx/LaTeX+xfig+graphviz/dotty+gnuplot output+gnumeric 
>> output, produces a better final product (into PDF)
>> than (word)+(visio)+(excel).   Nice detailed zoomable vector graphic 
>> diagrams in the middle of a paper.
>>
>> It just costs more (in time and effort) at least the first couple,..tens 
>> of times.  (handmade furniture versus ikea furniture)
>>     
>
> Fwiw, I use basically the same product suite, with the exception of tgif
> instead of xfig (http://bourbon.usc.edu/tgif/).  If you aren't familiar,
> it's worth checking out.  The features I like best over xfig are the way
> you can apply changes to a group of objects (like select a set of objects
> and change line/color/font properties of all at once) and the intelligent
> auto-guessing of object placement when you're duplicating.  I'm not familiar
> with Visio, but from what I'm reading this is probably not a visio replacement,
> just a better xfig (IMHO).
>
> - Rob
> .
>   
That(tgif) is pretty nice,.. thanks.  I'll have to add that to the 
bag-o-tricks.  Certainly a more intuitive interface.

It might be worth mentioning to anyone trying xfig,.... that if you run 
xfig and it is all  (weird )black and white widgets in the GUI, you have 
a misconfiguration.
I'm sure that is (really old) old news to some, but it might be a 
surprise that induces a yuk reaction.  I didn't see it for a long time, 
then I sat down in front of an institutionalized redhat varient and 
there it was again(wow,.. yuk).

this describes the fix.
http://www.xfig.org/userman/faq.html#nocolor

_Craig