Request: PNG transparency support

[Glassboy]

Is there any possibility that EA will support PNG transparency anytime soon?

One of the areas of resistance I face having more people within my group use EA is the perception that all of the diagrams produced are much uglier than Visio.  If for example I was able to use alternate images like the OSA icon library http://www.opensecurityarchitecture.org/cms/library/icon-library I would be able to get around this problem.

[Geert Bellekens]

Baseball bats tend to help as well as a means of persuasion

No without kidding, you should stress on the fact that EA is a modelling tool. So what you are creating is not a bunch of nice diagrams, but a structured model of the system you are investigating.
The nice looking diagrams are just a means of communicating with your stakeholders.

Not to say that I don't support the request, transparency support would indeed be nice.

Geert

[qwerty]

Well said, Geert. If you prefer a nice layout over a well structured model just stay with Visio. Good luck.

Transparency? Well if it's there one day, okay. In the meantime I'd prefer they take their time to fix bugs.

q.

[Paolo F Cantoni]

Well said, Geert. If you prefer a nice layout over a well structured model just stay with Visio. Good luck.

Transparency? Well if it's there one day, okay. In the meantime I'd prefer they take their time to fix bugs.

q.

The problem with that is that management ALWAYS prefer a nice layout over the well structured model.  They want stuff to be SIMPLISTIC - simple and WRONG...  (indeed many don't even use the word SIMPLISTIC correctly - so what hope do we have?)

The notion of a model is a paradigm shift for most people.  We forget how 'second nature" this is to us... As the old American Express advertisement used to say:  "Don't leave home without it...".

Like you, I'd like the bugs fixed.  But many of the bugs relate to not providing enough control over the rendering to allow us to compete with Visio (and in management's eyes - we're "behind the eight-ball"!).

It is an uphill battle...

Paolo
(Don't get me started on Visio's native BPMN support...)

[Glassboy]

I just think that given EA by default saves a diagram image as a PNG and that WMF\EMF use has become limited in the rest of the software world that making the default image type for the Alternate Image functionality should be PNG, and that PNG transparency support is vital for that.

Graphic applications with WMF\EMF backwards compatibility are also becoming rarer and rarer.

[qwerty]

It is an uphill battle...

That's it. In my old days I can't fight the same way I did in older days. I accepted that I can't always get what I want.

q.

[Glassboy]

An additional thing that occurred to me yesterday was that the desire to produce HTML output is only going to increase.  Good PNG support strengthens this.