Is Dia an adequate replacement for Visio?
Over the last 18 months or so I’ve been moving slowly and steadily towards using exclusively open source software. I’ve replaced Windows with Ubuntu, abandoned Internet Explorer for Firefox, Microsoft Outlook for Thunderbird, etcetera. However there have been a few proprietary programs that have been exceptionally difficult to locate equivalents for in the open source realm - and Visio is one of them.
I’m hoping the discovery I just uncovered will resolve that long-standing hole in my suite of programs. Known as Dia, the program:
“…is roughly inspired by the commercial Windows program ‘Visio’, though more geared towards informal diagrams for casual use. It can be used to draw many different kinds of diagrams. It currently has special objects to help draw entity relationship diagrams, UML diagrams, flowcharts, network diagrams, and many other diagrams. It is also possible to add support for new shapes by writing simple XML files, using a subset of SVG to draw the shape.”
I’ve only just downloaded and installed the software within the last 5 minutes and therefore haven’t come to any firm conclusions as of yet; but as soon as I have I’ll post my thoughts here.
I’m not a hardcore Visio user, so even a basic replacement should be more than enough for me. The main consideration though will be the option to import and export documents in the native Visio file format. I’m well and truly open source oriented, however many of my colleagues are not and I need to be able to work within the constraints of the proprietary crowd.
Update: I’ve had more of a play with the software and have experienced mixed results. By and large the program does everything I need it to in terms of functionality, however the options for exporting Visio-compatible file formats seems to yield somewhat rudimentary results.
I created a basic flowchart in Dia using very basic shapes, saved the file, and then exported it as a VDX file (Visio XML format). The file was recognised as a Visio file and defaulted to Visio, however before displaying the document a warning message appeared indicating “There is some XML data in the document that Visio does not understand.”
After clicking through the message the document was displayed and contained noticeable formatting changes, some of which rendered the text (such as the first step in the workflow) unreadable.
The implications: From the standpoint of individual usage I can see myself using Dia instead of Visio. The program’s tool conventions are quite similar to Visio and easy to pick up quickly. Functionality-wise it’s more than sufficient for my basic needs.
However from the standpoint of collaboration I’ll have to continue using Visio for now. My colleagues are well and truly Visio users, and any alternative to Visio will need to facilitate complete interchangeability with no degradation or compatibility problems. Based on what I’ve seen with Dia so far the program isn’t there just yet. I do think it will be in time though.
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Saturday, May 31st, 2008