Hello all, I am an information system security professional, and in the course of my work I often have to provide diagrams of all kinds, working on workstations provided by my customers. In all cases but one the professional context forced me to rely on the Visio file format and obtaining access to this expensive tool often proved problematic. Currently, I work in an environment where only one workstation in the building has a Visio licence, my customers expect me to use Microsoft Office formats to be able to read my work. So here's the catch: I need to work on diagrams, and for this I am forced to use an expensive and thus often unavailable tool, Microsoft Visio. I would love to use LibreOffice Draw, especially in a portable version (I have LibreOffice 4.1 on an USB drive on my keychain) but I cannot because I often interact with tools that expect a format it cannot output. There already is a VSD import filter in LibreOffice 4.1 so I believe most of the code required to add the export capacity is already written. Could you please finish it and create a Visio format export filter? Beyond my personal case, it could eliminate an obstacle to companies that would like to migrate away from the Microsoft Office suite as a whole, but are prevented from doing so by the need to still buy Visio licences. Best regards, Xavier
That is not how it works.
> There already is a VSD import filter in LibreOffice 4.1 The key word here is _import_. It is an external library. It _reads_ the _important_ parts (IOW, not everything) of the input file and produces output through an interface. That interface is implemented by another external library, that produces ODF. Finally, the ODF is imported by libreoffice. There is _no way_ to reverse that process. > so I believe > most of the code required to add the export capacity is already > written. You are completely wrong. There is _no_ code with export capacity. There is only knowledge of (the important parts of) the visio format. > Could you please finish it There is nothing to finish here. > and create a Visio format export > filter? That said, if anyone wants to write an export to visio, I will not oppose him. But it would be unrelated to the import code.
Hm. I wrote under the assumption that the input filters had been coded as part of the project and not using a third party library. On second thought I could and should have thought of the possibility and worded my request in consequence. I am guilty of wishful thinking I guess. I also realise, reading Mr Tardon's answer, that my use of the verb "finish" might be misinterpreted as accusing the devs of laziness. Perish the thought. English is not my natural language, and I occasionally make this kind of mistakes. Sorry about that. Now, I can only hope that someone will stand up and consider starting the work on an export filter because, unfortunately, I have neither the time nor the knowledge to do it myself. It's been waaaaay too long since I last wrote any serious code.
*** Bug 83898 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
*** Bug 82003 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
This ticket was created for Draw but might be in better hands at the filter and storage component.
It would be very nice indeed so much this functionality but I understand that it must have much more reverse engineering work to open the formats. I think Draw.io/diagrams.net has beta functionality to save to vsdx.