Bounty: MS Visio Counterpart for OpenOffice

[John Smith]

Hi,


Im willing to offer a bounty for an MS Visio Counterpart for OpenOffice, but am unsure of what that would cost me or how long it would take to code it. So I need a general ballpark figure for a Microsoft Visio counterpart (both in features and in formats) for OpenOffice. The final solution needs to be able to read/write Microsoft Visio format files, and be accepted as a part of the current OpenOffice project.

The end result program must be written in C/C++ (just like the rest of OpenOffice), and the program should make use of the standard infrastructure and libraries that are provided by the current OpenOffice foundation. The resulting program must be
accepted by the developers of the OpenOffice project for inclusion in future versions of OpenOffice. So it would be a good idea to have close contact with the openOffice developers if you are going in the right direction - and maybe even start off with setting up an 'incubator' project on the OpenOffice website.

Furthermore, the resulting program must be file format compatible with the Microsoft Visio file formats, so that would require a lot of reverse engineering on your part of the file formats.

Also, the resulting program must be able to compile and run on the same platforms as OpenOffice currently runs like Linux and Windows.

And lastly, the end result needs to have about 80% of the main features that Microsoft Visio offers, so this will require an analysis/inventory of those features, so that they can be implemented in the end result as well.


Any help any way whatsoever that can be supplied here, is surely appreciated.



Regards,


John Smith

[TheGurkha]

Hi and welcome to the forums.

Sadly, what you are asking for is a monumental piece of work. And that is an understatement.

[Villeroy]

http://www.osalt.com/visio
http://www.osalt.com/openoffice-draw

Furthermore, the resulting program must be file format compatible with the Microsoft Visio file formats, so that would require a lot of reverse engineering on your part of the file formats.

... and would contradict the main intention of the whole project: Get away from proprietary file formats. The ODF file format for vector graphics has been defined already.

[John Smith]

Hi,


I realize that the work involved in this is great. Also, I do not ask to primarily be compatible with the proprietary Microsfot formats, just to be able to read/write them just like the current OpenOffice programs able to read/write the Microsoft formats. Of course, I would like the primary file format to be an open format, and if the OpenOffice project already defined that, to use that as the default file format.


Regards,


John Smith.