"Fernando Colina" <Fernando.Colina@UMB.EDU> wrote:

>Drawing a diagram of any complicated process is essential

For some people or processes it is, and for other people or processes it isn't. I don't think there's a single universal rule.

Some people think in images and spatial relationships, and for those people diagrams are a good thing. Other people don't think that way, and some other form of description (Structured English, for example) would be more useful.

Flow charts aren't nearly as useful for event-driven programs, which are much more common now than they were 20 or 30 years ago.

Personally, I find data relationship diagrams helpful, but not flow charts.

>and it is >absolutely mind-boggling that 20 years after the personal computer >revolution not one major software house has released an affordable, general >purpose diagramming program (does everybody at Microsoft draw their diagrams >on paper?).

Three possibilities:

- It's much harder to do than you think, or

- There is such a program, and you don't know about it (perhaps MS is using Visio with their own add-ins), or

- No one thinks it's worth doing.

>Try "Edge Diagrammer" from www.pacestar.com . It's the closest >thing to one of the best Macintosh programs from the eighties, the >now-defunct "Design".

-- JackHamilton@FirstHealth.com Development Manager, Technical Group METRICS Department, First Health West Sacramento, California USA