On 3/13/06, Peter Moulder wrote:
- Conceivably just as general illustration program or flowcharting / diagramming tool. But what's the benefit of inkscape over OOo Draw or Visio etc. ? SVG support is the main thing that stands out from http://wiki.inkscape.org/wiki/index.php/OpenDraw. (Plus the graph layout stuff, though I'd guess that Dia or Visio are still better than Inkscape for most graph drawing; though I think both can export to SVG.)
The main benefits over Dia/Kivio/Visio are:
- drawing is *really* fast; if you ever tried to learn Visio's hotkeys, you know what I'm talking about :) - clones are very useful for flowcharting, I use them all the time; - connector that works in almost any difficult case; - layers that work (implementation of layers in Visio plain sucks, Kivio's and Dia's ones are better though).
As for connectors, Visio 2007 has a new autorouting tool that is worth looking at. Dunno if Michael Wybrow has Beta1 of new MS Office and whether it's a good idea to nuke Dia in flowcharting battlefiled :)
I would say that when it comes to flowcharting, Inkscape is a great tool for users with artistic background who struggle against impossibility to do their work fast in "big good special tools".
Alexandre