[baliset]

OmniGraffle Pro is a member of that rare category of software: insanely great. It's worth every cent of the registration.


This is a request for OmniGraffle to support importing from more external file types than it currently does (which is one of the only failings I'll level at the program, apart from occasional slowness in large documents), specifically, Claris Impact (may it rest in peace).

I finally bit the bullet and bought myself an Intel MacBook Pro. Lovely. Except, I realised with a sinking feeling that all my documents created with Classic applications which don't have native OS-X equivalents, like Claris Impact, are now inaccessible. Sure, I still have access via Claris Impact on my old PPC machine, but I want to convert the data up to something I can continue to use and am very uneasy about the prospect of dawdling, only to find in a few years that even PPC Macs are out to pasture and the data is lost forever.

I have a handfull of really, really big Claris Impact docs. None of them are particularly complex in terms of the layout- no funky shading or layout elements unique to Impact, but they do have lots and lots of simpler elements; boxes, lines, and things like box/text/line objects the grouping of which I would like to preserve. I've done things like network diagrams and family trees this way (not as flowchart objects, because I needed more flexibility. These are just collections of geometric primitives and lots of text labels)

Obviously, to be able to bring such a doc into OmniGraffle would be fantastic. I don't mind if I lose a little formatting, just so the bones are there. I can re-polish it.

It seems to me that the answer to this problem ought to be simpler than I suspect it really is. Obviously, each program has some kind of (probably proprietary) internal document structure to account for layout elements, size, placement, grouping hierarchy and so on. But surely a line is a line, and a square is a square? Is there any way I can get my Impact documents into OmniGraffle, or indeed any other OS-X native program?


Thanks in advance.

[JKT]

I presume you have tried copy and paste? You never know it might (almost) just work...

FWIW, if you are desperate for Classic on the Intel Mac, Sheepshaver might be an option though I have read that it is a little difficult to set up.

[baliset]

I have more information to add to my previous post.

Yes, you can copy and paste from Claris Impact to OmniGraffle, but the results are vexing. The object that ends up being embedded in the OmniGraffle document is an inedible "block" with the dimensions of all the elements highlited in the copy action in Impact. The object is definitely a vector object in that it can be scaled or rotated and remains "smooth" and is not pixelated at all. Even if a single object, like a text object, is selected, when it is copied into OmniGraffle it is pretty, smooth, and even keeps the colour and font, but sadly is entirely uneditable. The text tool does not recognise it as text. I have vague stirrings of a memory about such objects being QuickDraw or PICT format and wonder if this is right.

Perhaps the question is now not one of importing entire Claris Impact documents but requesting that the copy and paste function be smarter with regard to copied vector objects from other programs. If the copy and paste option could at least translate "on the fly" from a monolithic vectorised block and into the individual elements it comprised, then we would be really getting somewhere.

Any more thoughts?

[Greg Titus]

Yeah, it sounds like Claris Impact is copying as vector PICT, which Graffle recognizes, but just treats as an embedded image format.

[baliset]

Bump, especially now there are rumors of Omnigraffle 5 being in alpha phase. Wouldn't it be wonderful if this was one of the features they were going to include?

I have been trying to figure out a way to do this for years, I found it by accident yesterday. The solution requires you have a working copy of Claris Impact. Open your document in Claris Impact and select "Save As". Change the document type to "PICT" then click save. Now you have a PICT version of your document that retains all the properties of the original. You can open the PICT version in OS X with MacDraft or Appleworks. I know it works in these 2 programs, other software that reads PICT files may also work. At first it may appear that you only have a single picture but there is one more step to go. Now you must "Ungroup" the document and wa-lah, all the elements are once again ready to edit. You may need to clean up your file but at least you don't have to start from scratch. It can be done! And I had everything I needed to do it all along.

Gene

I have confirmed ezDraw will also open PICT files. Remember the key is to "ungroup" the selection. The results are near perfect if you have the all the fonts used in the original document installed on the OS X computer.