Working down through you comments without "top posting"... (I only today learned it has a name and that its bad netiquette, huh.)
About 12 years ago, I looked for and found incredibly expensive Visio add on stencils (multiple hundreds of $ for not very comprehensive a libraries). There was no way to make them yourself. I am not kidding. I never saw any free Visio stencils, and at the time there was no API or tools freely available to make them. Mike sees Dia, Mike stops looking at Visio. As I said, maybe things have changed.
You mention Cisco stencils, they are not Microsoft the owners of Visio, who decided long ago not to give the ability to make Visio stencils freely. Cisco can afford the API or whatever it takes to make Visio stencils, presumably they did just that. And, they've deep enough pockets and motivation to give them away. Your desire to have general floor plan shapes, and our little Dia effort don't really fit the same mold.
"Did you try to make sheets in Dia, seriously?"
I do not, because my needs don't require it. I mostly draw things and I make and copy things as I go. I always found the shape making stuff annoying, and haven't explored the new tools. My habits notwithstanding, users like you and I are the only source of sheets of shapes.
If you want shapes, you can make them. (AFAIK, this IS NOT possible with Visio, unless you have the cash to buy the privilege.) You are clearly the first who has felt a need for these floor plan shapes with sufficient strength to create them, otherwise they would exist. There is no corporate function here, no marketing, no R&D with a nice budget. Nobody planning to create new sheets to satisfy the check writing, software buying public. Just people making parts of the software that serve their needs. Same goes for the shapes.
I hope this won't discourage you, but if you make a nice set of floor plan shapes I might like to use them.
I don't think you have any reason to be incredulous or complain. This is just how open source works.
$20 dollars is hmmm, about 10 or 15 minutes of high quality software development work? A well planned screen cast is more costly than that. I too doubt anyone will take you up on that, the market won't bear it.
If you think about it, you are offering that $20 in an environment where money is not the coin of the realm. No one is getting paid here. Everyone working here has other motivations (and are probably gainfully employed elsewhere as well - full time). The motivation is mostly self interest where shapes and sheets are concerned. Your offer is kind of insulting, to me at least. I think maybe you felt insulted by my reply, and I am sorry for that. But reality strikes - you may just have to learn how to use Dia as all before you have done, by experimenting, with patience, and then make some shapes. I am not trying to be mean.
Reading between the lines, with my sarcasm detector twitching, I think you are saying you find making shapes and sheets confusing and difficult. I completely agree with you. That is why I don't screw around with them much. But many people do and seem to be successful.
The path of least resistance is going to be a nice attitude - things only get done here by virtue of cooperation. If you do undertake to make shapes and ask questions on this list - and you are nice about it - you WILL actually get all the help you need.
If you have questions about licensing, it is standard open source. You will find information about it on the main webpage (linked at the bottom of every post), then to the FAQ, where it is the last thing in the TOC which is co-located with the FAQ for easy reference. There is no staff here to write further Q&A about the GPL v2, it is what it is.
If you want to share your instructions about conversions of VSS to SVGs, and would like to add that to the help files, there is a way. There was a recent thread about adding to help files and there are archives of the list. Despite that, you will still get answers on this list.
Enjoy your free software.
Mike
On Mon, Jun 11, 2012 at 8:41 PM, Valek Filippov
<frob gnome org> wrote:
> As far as I know there is no such thing as free visio stencils. But, maybe
> things have changed. In the past they were very far from free, and
> therefore not freely given.
You are kidding me, right?
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/prod/assets/visio/product_visio_icon0900aecd800940c3.html
grep for "Who", read the answer loudly.
Those stencils were available for about 15 years. About 5 years ago
I've asked Cisco Systems to clarify what's the "license" for it and in
a few weeks they replied to me directly and put a notice on the web
site, the one which later was transformed into Q/A.
> A very important feature of Dia vis a vis Visio is the fact that you can
> make shapes and sheets yourself.
Does it imply "you cannot make shapes/sheets yourself in Visio"?
Did you try to make sheets in Dia, seriously?
> If you want some, you have in Dia the tools to make them yourself,
> and you can ask for help about how to do it on this list.
I would offer $20 to the first one who publish screencast of doing
WS-X6748-GE-TX faceplate from scratch in Dia using Dia's tools and
asking for help about how to do it on this list, but I doubt anybody
will even try.
I can describe different ways to convert VSS to SVGs though, for
anybody who are not ready to waste their life re-doing everything
yourself.
--
Cheers,
Valek
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