Re: dia file exchange

[Cyrille Chepelov <chepelov calixo net>]

Le mer, jun 06, 2001, à 07:49:30 +0000, Lyle Bateman a écrit:
> How can I export a dia file so that it is editable by Visio or CorelDraw
> (ie, a simple bitmap export isn't good enough here)?  I have tried dfx
> and neither Visio nor Corel seem to be able to read the file, though
> they recognize the format as an Autocad file (is this dfx the same as
> the Autocad dfx?).  I'm also thinking about XML, but can't seem to find
> a way to open that in Corel or Visio either.  Anyway, if anyone has any
> suggestions, I'm all ears.

You might have some luck with the SVG filters, perhaps also with the WMF
and/or EPS exports.

Dia's DXF support is quite limited, and the subset of DXF it supports might
not match the subset of DXF supported by the packages you've mentioned.

Currently, there's no "intelligent" file format understood both by Visio and
dia: if you ever find a format understood by both, you'll have only a bunch
of stupid shapes, not "intelligent" objects. The result is that the small
interoperability, if any, is probably not very useful...

(dia's native file format is gzipped XML; it's quite easy to parse. However, 
I'm afraid XML is not the silver bullet described in the trade press, and 
dia's file being XML won't help loading them into Visio much, unless you're 
ready to write a dia-to-Visio filter in a scripting language able to drive 
Visio, if such a thing exists).

	-- Cyrille

-- 
Grumpf.