linux-cert,
This has nothing to do with certification... it's just a personal note...
If any of you - or anyone you know - are interested in developing
a piece of software to contribute back to the Linux community,
or just looking for an interesting programming challenge - here's
a place you can help... org charts.
They're not a sexy topic.... nothing overly exciting... and,
in fact, for a lot of Linux organizations and startups, the
very idea of having an organization chart might be foreign... but
as Linux expands out into the larger IT world... well... there's
a lot of people and companies out there that want to make org charts.
I have tried for the last week or so to make an org chart describing
the structure of LPI (requested by someone making a presentation to
potential sponsors) and to do so with Linux.
First I tried with Applixware... and I was able to draw an initial
chart - but when I wanted to rearrange and move items around it was a
MAJOR headache and I soon gave up.
So I started searching http://www.freshmeat.net/ , http://www.linuxapps.com/
and http://metalab.unc.edu/ . I searched for terms like "org chart",
"organization chart", "chart",
"diagram", "Visio" (after the PC network
diagramming software) and came up with only a very few suggestions.
One was for KOffice, which I checked into and saw KChart, but was
unable to get it all working. (http://koffice.kde.org/kchart/)
I had trouble with the download, and perhaps I just need to try
it again, but the web site does say it is *pre*-alpha, so I was
a bit reluctant to spend too much time on it, especially since the
KChart web page said nothing about its capabilities.
Another suggestion, which was also supplied from some mailing lists to
which I posed the question, was for Dia:
http://www.lysator.liu.se/~alla/dia/dia.html
Which turned out to be a great tool! It didn't do exactly what I
wanted... but I was able to draw boxes, rearrange things, etc., etc.
It was working great, and has a great set of features.... I was
pleased and excited...
And then last night, after 45 minutes of working on it, during which
time I was saving the file every 5 to 10 minutes, Dia suddenly died
and disappeared completely from my screen. However, what was worse
was that somehow the program also *erased* completely the file that I
was working on! I spent a significant amount of time using "find" and
other tools to try to locate the file and had to conclude that it was
gone. So I just shut down my system and went to bed...
This morning, not wanting to go through all that again and being
under a deadline, I went over to the NT box I have in my office,
launched Microsoft PowerPoint, launched the embedded Org Chart
tool, designed the whole chart and exported it to a PNG file - all in
about 20 minutes.
In fairness, PowerPoint has been around for a good number of
years now, and the MS developers have had plenty of time to add
and improve things... and the world of Linux GUI apps is still
quite new... still... it was an annoying setback for my personal
desire to use only Linux apps for daily operations.
So... if any of you are looking for a way to contribute... here's
a place we could definitely use a tool. Whether it's an enhancement
to Dia... or KChart... or a completely separate app (heck, I'd even
take a non-GUI app that generated a chart off of some type of XML file!)
.. whatever... here's a definite hole waiting to be filled!
Frustrated in org-chart-land,
Dan
P.S. If anyone *does* work on such a program, I'll be GLAD to be
a beta-tester!
--
--------------------------------------------------------
Dan York, Certification Program Manager, Linuxcare, Inc.
[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.linuxcare.com/
1-603-264-0129 mobile, 603-268-0691 tel, 603-268-0103 fax
Linuxcare. At the center of Linux.
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