From jpage at omnigroup.com  Fri Nov 30 11:29:09 2007
From: jpage at omnigroup.com (Joel Page)
Date: Fri Nov 30 12:09:46 2007
Subject: OmniGraffle 5.0 beta 1 is now available
Message-ID: <03D274B0-9F72-4CD9-B95D-10A4F7CC5D22@omnigroup.com>

As many of you no doubt know, we've all been very busy here at the  
Omni Group as of late. However, some of us have been busy with  
something that is not OmniFocus. That's right, OmniGraffle 5 is now  
ready for public beta testing.

NOTA BENE: OmniGraffle 5.0 beta 1 requires Mac OS X 10.5 to run.

So, what's new with OmniGraffle 5? If I were to tell you its story  
(which is a technique taught to me by Scott Maier long ago), it would  
something along these lines...

The basic plot encompasses a new layout engine based on the Graphviz  
code, offering two new layout types in addition to the two already  
present. Bezier controls on connection lines are now also in place to  
make hierarchical layouts even better, along with whatever uses you,  
the kind reader, may find for them. Along with the new layout engine  
comes Subgraphs, which are special pieces of hierarchy that can be  
collapsed and expanded as needed.

There's an exciting subplot involving the Stencil Window where you can  
view the entire library of stencils, perform searches for them based  
on their labels, notes, or custom data. You can even search  
Graffletopia <http://graffletopia.com/> for stencils and download them  
to your computer easily.

Some elements have gotten a rewrite, such as Master Canvases being  
replaced by the new Shared Layers, where you can have as many shared  
layers per canvas as needed, and changes made anywhere to a Shared  
Layer propagate to all other instances of the Shared Layer. Likewise,  
the Style: Summary Inspector has been replaced with a new Style Tray  
where you can easily drag object styles to other objects.

Layers can now display in an accessory view where you can view all of  
the objects on a layer and more easily move elements between layers  
and reorder them. The Drawing Tools palette can show all or just some  
of the tools you want and you can reorder tools as wanted.

For those of you watching on small screens, the ruler accessory view  
now contains a subset of inspector controls for changing styles, in  
case you're not keen on having the regular inspectors up all the time.

Lots and lots of other improvements have been put in place as well,  
too long to list here however there's a handy new tutorial in the  
OmniGraffle Help to get you started.

There's this one really great part where OmniGraffle 5 supports Quick  
Look.

And for the spoilerific plot twist at the end of the story:  We've  
added a Visio binary file format parser, so you can directly open the  
default Microsoft Visio file format, VSD.

We haven't made any decisions about a release date or pricing, keep an  
eye out for an announcement from our marketing team concerning that.

So, if you're running Leopard, please stop by the Beta Download Page <http://www.omnigroup.com/applications/omnigraffle/beta/ 
 >, peruse the release notes, and enjoy!


Joel Page
Product Manager, OmniGraffle
The Omni Group