Lucidchart debuts Chrome/Firefox extension for viewing Microsoft Visio files

http://thenextweb.com/insider/2013/04/18/lucidchart-debuts-chrome-extension-firefox-add-on-for-viewing-and-editing-microsoft-visio-files/?utm_source=HackerNews&utm_medium=share%2Bbutton&utm_content=LucidChart%20debuts%20Chrome%20extension%2C%20Firefox%20add-on%20for%20viewing%20and%20editing%20Microsoft%20Visio%20files&utm_campaign=social%2Bmedia

by enuncajon • 13 years ago

31 7 13 years ago

thenextweb.com

balac• 13 years ago

Does anyone know of an open source web based SVG editor with Visio compatibility than can be embedded into applications?

dmgrow3• 13 years ago

Lucidchart isn't open source but it does have a public API allowing the editor to be embedded in other applications.

https://www.lucidchart.com/pages/api_documentation

Or it has a simpler Visio API which allows other applications to use Lucidchart as a Visio viewer.

draugadrotten• 13 years ago

Lucidcharts has promise but their subscription model isn't working out for business use in large organisations.

Lucidchart seems to target large accounts but their business model seems tuned for small businesses.

  Companies wants to centralize licensing and not add yet another vendor. Since you can't subscribe through normal licensing channels, the tool isn't widely adopted.

For personal use, I can't justify the subscription cost and I tend to avoid subscriptions for anything for better budget management.

dmgrow3• 13 years ago

Interestingly, a recent survey of enterprise Google domains found Lucidchart as the 8th most popular web application in enterprises:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/joemckendrick/2013/03/27/20-most...

What is not working for companies today is the $250 - $1000 price tag for each license of Microsoft Visio.

j_s• 13 years ago

One competitor ( http://Draw.io ) is free forever if installed as a Google App before May 01, 2013.

https://www.google.com/enterprise/marketplace/viewListing?pr...

atesti• 13 years ago

I bet this became possible because of the recent progress in the past months with this great library: http://cgit.freedesktop.org/libreoffice/contrib/libvisio

Or they embed Libre Office directly in order to convert visio to svg. So far there seems to be no documentation at all about the binary Visio file format and that library is the only thing out there!

dmgrow3• 13 years ago

Actually Lucidchart has imported and exported Visio documents for a couple years, and we don't use the LibreOffice library at all.

We reverse engineered the binary format!

Lucidchart debuts Chrome/Firefox extension for viewing Microsoft Visio files

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