Sharing space for Visio Shape

Started by awa123, December 25, 2021, 10:29:47 PM

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Surrogate

Quote from: Nikolay on December 31, 2021, 12:03:13 AM
It does not solve the main problem of parsing Visio stencils (and creating preview images and searchable text from shapes).
3 years ago i try wrote my own macro for create list with preview for my some stencils
And after this i found tool Visio Power Tools2010 by Saveen Reddy.

Using this tool I created list of master-shapes and PDF-document with master-shapes preview (274 page document that looks like the screenshot above) of Visio Plan 2 stencils in 2019.

Of course, it looks wildly old-fashioned! But it better than never :)

Nikolay

You are right. I was assuming there is nothing but this site, so users upload a stencil there and the site adds the shapes from it to the search automatically.

But if you assume that user can also prepare or pre-process stencils locally with your tool or that script somehow before uploading then this could work. If the user has Visio installed locally of course.

Yacine

A tagging system would also be fine.
Both for the stencil and the individual shapes.
A database would store these data.
When someone uploads a stencil the db needs to be triggered (somehow) and some code would then analyze the stencil. Check for specific fields in the doc's user section (eg purpose, categories, tags, author, version, ... etc.).
If the fields don't exist yet, they will created and can be edited afterwards.
The code would then iterate over the masters and repeat the checking process, but for master specific topics (name, description, color, 3D, SmartShape, DataDriven, ...).
It would then create thumbnails of the masters (may be in different sizes).
As for the naming, it could be Stencil_Name (unique), Version, Shape_Name
GitHub Pages allows the use of Javascript - We should then check if the page could interact with the db to build up a result page with images, based on a search.

I don't know if the stencils can be stored automatically in subfolders ... useful? feasable?

A big challenge remains when considering the automation of adding a stencil.
Ideally the uploader would do all the work. Setting this automation up might be very difficult.
On the other hand, asking admins to do the job is also risky since you depend on this "resource".
Yacine

Nikolay

Yes, this sounds reasonable. Like a project with a five figures budget  ;D

Yacine

#34
Having now played a couple of hours with the system, I understand much more your point when you say that a dedicated self made project would be a better idea.
Having this separation between main repos and pages sites is so complicated that normal users may not get the point.
It is difficult to organize the structure into folders.
... will think it over more thoroughly ... and maybe keep it as very personal repo ... don't know yet.
Please discourage me from discarding this project :D :D :D
BTW, what are five figures when you have enthusiasm and a community? Nothing!

I however still agree with you that it needs to stay reasonable! It is as always a costs vs. gains balance.
Yacine

Nikolay

I would add a couple of more wishes to kill it  :)

1. The community shapes should be available in the stock shape search in Visio.
2. Shape developers should be able to sell their shapes

I thought this was the idea of the Microsoft visio app store.
Not sure why they cancelled it.. I would probably still let Microsoft do it. Some day.

Yacine

#36
for 1:
A macro driven search tool could do the job. eg: docked window, search field, connection to internet, results in window.
for 2:
One could - with the help of the tool - publish only the images. The sales operation would then be carried out differently (github: no, relink: maybe, separate platform: probably)

Speaking about selling, this could become a bigger thing if there were tools where people would invest development time in exchange of money. Like with the big icons market. An idea to follow.
Yacine

Paul Herber

"The Plan" was to have everything available via the Microsoft Store, even free stuff. To put stuff into the Microsoft Store you need to create a MSIX package containing whatever you want to distribute. MSIX does not work with Office yet. 2 years and waiting.
Electronic and Electrical engineering, business and software stencils for Visio -

https://www.paulherber.co.uk/

Surrogate

Hi, Yacine !

I began to add useful hyperlinks to the new resource.
Just now there is only one repository is friendly (GitPages) - https://github.com/Visio-Resources/Shapes-n-stencils.

PS In the ToDo section there is an item
Quote4. hand the project to a young enthousiastic "Visioneer".
Who do you mean ?  ;)

Yacine

#39
I am very surprised indeed!
I was up to deleting my "attempt", as I (meanwhile) found several other github pages already collecting shapes.
Having you contributing to my initial idea will of course stop me from deleting the page.
Let me check your contribution in the coming days.
Till then, thxs in advance.
Yacine

Paul Herber

A problem for me is: I do have a problem with the MIT license.
Electronic and Electrical engineering, business and software stencils for Visio -

https://www.paulherber.co.uk/

Yacine

#41
Quote from: Paul Herber on January 06, 2022, 03:43:42 PM
A problem for me is: I do have a problem with the MIT license.


Why is that? I stumbled upon the license entry, read the recommendation page and chose the simplest license type in the list. What are your issues about it?
Do you prefer another one?
Yacine

Surrogate

#42
I added a little more information, with a readme.md to each repository:
https://github.com/Visio-Resources/Shapes-n-stencils (based on the chapter 3rd-party additions for Microsoft Visio from the article Stuff about Visio by Paul Herber)
https://github.com/Visio-Resources/Snippets-n-Libraries
https://github.com/Visio-Resources/developing-solutions
https://github.com/Visio-Resources/Links
We also have friendly versions on git-pages (like this), but now these versions are not synchronized.

Yacine

#43
And yet another nerd spending his holiday time on visio!
:D :D :D :D :D


Thank you.
Yacine

Surrogate

#44
Quote from: Yacine on June 06, 2022, 09:53:04 AMspending his holiday time

My next crazy idea: to make an English-language analogue of the navigator, which is available in the Russian-speaking community
https://visioport.epizy.com/navi/png_1.htm
Behind each segment in the circle there is a hyperlink that will open the corresponding article

I will leave collections of English-language links only. Right now, about 30% of the resources linked to are in Russian. I think it makes little sense to give links through auto-translate services.
Here is a draft of how it will be...
If you click on For Business or Specialization, the list expands to