I need to draw a block diagram. I've worked on it for quite some time in Visio,
having an urge to act in ways incompatible with civilization about once in a
minute, which is not bad for this type of program. Now I want to export the
thing in PNG, detaching it from the universe of Microsoft file formats.
PNG export doesn't export bullets (the dots are invisible in the output). Not to
mention changing the width of parts of some of the arrows and the like.
BMP export does the same thing with the extra benefit of generating bitmaps xv
won't open (presumably the bonus points go to xv here). There must be an
abstract canvas class somewhere down the guts - three cheers for object-oriented
programming. Too bad they didn't merge it with the other abstract class used for
rendering. Or did they use HDC directly?
HTML export produces something Firefox displays as a black screen. Inside, it
looks like a constant bulk of script referring to a binary .emz file. Apparently
this doesn't cross the boundary of Microsoft file formats, so it might at least
render correctly in Explorer, but I couldn't check, since it refused to access
the files from the local network.
Print preview doesn't have a full screen mode, so it took me two screen shots
and hand-patching them to "export" the diagram. A true application of polymorphism.
I did the patching in gimp. Using intuitive commands like "Layer to imagesize".
And it has a "parasite editor" extension ("xtn", more precisely). Maybe I can
edit the authors of Visio with this thing so they learn to save what they redner.
Writing the message without using the word "fuck" was a tough excersize.
