Visio Guy

Quote from: Visio Guy on April 14, 2024, 04:38:04 PMI have a "jammer" tool that I have long thought might be used for distributing smart techniques via text. This fits in with this discussion, to some extent.

That definitely sounds interesting to quick and easy modify existing shapes.
Here I would like to create an quick & easy way to search & insert shapes from the community without the need to download and open a stencil before.
Maybe such a community shape server could be hosted here next to the forum.
Every Visguy user would be able to contribute, either by uploading stencils, or by drag & drop from the page into the addin.
The usability is important. If it's not quick & easy nobody will use it.

@Nikolay:
Thanks for your input.
It was a simple rectangle on the same diagram.
I will check that again later this week and create a minimal example.

Funny thing.  On way to repair shop I bumped into Yacine as he was leaving.  We chatted for awhile...

> which version of Visio?
> do you have gluing enabled for geometry shapes?
> do the shapes have glue points? 
> both inny and outy?  An inny point likes to glue to an outy.  Inny = type 0, outy = 1. For example, place inny pts on left side, outy pts on right side (or visa versa).  When you grab shape to drag it, place mouse near conn pt of interest as Visio will focus on pt nearest to where mouse grabs the shape.  Drag shape such that an inny aligns to an outy.

@Yacine:  shop owner thinks my crystal ball may not be repairable.  How about you?

You are absolutely right
I have selected everything - and i cannot glue 2 rectangles together.
I am trying all glue options one by one, and then all together. still nothing.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1vsIkSFsphdXqe-sTXKcAqs_6PIs4XSUK/view?usp=drive_link

Crystal ball @ repair service, sorry. 

I got in a strange situation.
I cannot glue nothing.... I have a simple rectangle and i cannot glue it to anything. What did i do wrong?

Thanks Both,
I will try provided direction.

One quesiton:
"Since the widths represent time, why not use timeline shapes.  As I recall, these can be ganged together."
Since i am representing seconds, by some reason i cannot adjust it to so small steps.

@Surrogate IMHO that does not matter. If you support an application, you support it; otherwise you don't.
It's been 10 years already since the App store has been added to the other office applications.

@Thomas - my assumption is that the issue with the color may be related to themes somehow. Maybe you should save not "Shapes" but "Shapes Xml" (or whatever there is) somehow (there are multiple variations of the data stream you can get from a shape). I.e. does the problem with the color happen if you copy/paste on the same diagram? If not, then it's diagram settings probably. Like, in the shape serialized you have a refernece to theme like "THEMECOLOR()" and then ween deserizalized, that resolves to the color of the current theme and not to the one that was serialized.

Quote from: Thomas Winkel on April 14, 2024, 08:16:06 PMMS should integrate such a feature in Visio and also should provide the infrastructure.

I'm not sure it's going to be profitable for them!

thanks for all the Feedback

Quote from: Nikolay on April 14, 2024, 03:12:35 PMIf you actually want to create them from a memory stream (from the downloaded data), that will be a bit more complicated, but perfectly possible.

Great
Drag & Drop from local stencils is not the problem.
But how to do that from a DB on a remote server?
During my research I came across your article that could provide an approach:
https://unmanagedvisio.com/persisting-visio-shapes/
This way I could store the shapes directly in the database instead storing the stencils in the file-system.
Then I could (not proved that) in the drag event:
* Get the ID of the dragged image
* Get the shape data from the server by ID
* Convert the data to DataObject
* DoDragDrop(data, DragDropEffects.Copy);

My first experiment with your code was only partly successful because the the dropped shape lost formats (color).
Also I tried what happens if properties in document shapesheet are linked.
With regular copy & paste this is no problem. But with this method this information was lost.
I also tried to to serialize the shape object with Newtonsoft JSON, but that`s not possible.

Quote from: wapperdude on April 14, 2024, 04:36:46 PMMy concern, in general, is security. 

The user must trust my AddIn, but if I only allow shapes or stencils without macros that should be secure?
Agree with Nikolay, that MS should integrate such a feature in Visio and also should provide the infrastructure.

Quote from: wapperdude on April 14, 2024, 04:36:46 PMMy concern, in general, is security.  However, from a company basis, have a central repository of unique, customized repository for shapes, stencils, and templates seems logical.  Being able to drag N drop would efficiently enhance that capability.

For a company, you can configure a shared folder with stencils/templates, and that's it. The shape search should work, the stencils/templates should show up in the "new".

I would say there is a need for an internet STORE where you can buy/get shapes (or solutions). Similar to other office applications; but this needs to be set up and maintained by Microsoft itself, to be trusted and out-of-the-box thing.

Any third-party store would require an installation of third-party software/plugins, this is a show-stopper for many.
Not to speak about developers: the cheapest digital signature now is $250 / year, with the introduction of the mandatory USB token.

I was thinking about copy-paste of a shape from a web page; with new "web" formats that could be even possible; but Visio still does not support that
https://developer.chrome.com/blog/web-custom-formats-for-the-async-clipboard-api. That is, the custom web formats and copy-paste could work without any third-party installs.