
Lucidchart debuts Chrome/Firefox extension for viewing Microsoft Visio files - enuncajon
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
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draugadrotten
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.

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j_s
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...](https://www.google.com/enterprise/marketplace/viewListing?productListingId=18806+14512935155953175632&pli=1&src=hn)

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atesti
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!

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dmgrow
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!

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

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dmgrow
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.

