UR and mind map software

[schferk]

Additional problems:

I

One of the big advantages in my experience of "mind-map" sw

- IN THE FUTURE, I'LL DO "mm" for "mind-map" (rights to "mind-map": Tony Buzan) and "MM" for "Mind Manager" (commercial product by Mindjet) -

is the consistent graphical representation of the material, i.e. you add branches, you manually move branches, but apart from that, every time you re-open a map, the branches will be at the same location they were when you last had worked / mused upon your map.

TheBrain does NOT seem to have such a consistent graphical representation of branches and their sub-branches, or at least, there is much fiddling with several "views" in order to at least have ALL sub-branches of a given branch / node displayed together, to begin with, and about re-arranging branches as in MM, well, I never got to it, and it seems impossible (must say that my last thorough trials with TB were with the last major version).

II

See I, and additional prob: I can NOT work with (meaning: all the advantages of mm's I have liste do NOT work for me if I accept) the "original" distribution of branches, in mm's, clockwise, i.e. those progs do the branches 1 h, 3 h, 6 h (here, most progs fill up the right side first, then go "after" 6 h - I'm not speaking of the order, which is always preserved by your doing the sibling for a given item, but the graphical distribution on the screen, order preserved, I'm speaking here), 9 h, with additional sibling branches being put between.

So, I in my MM, I manually rearrange my nodes by the system 11 h, 9 h, 7 h, 1 h, then 3 h, 5 h, meaning I go down on the left side, then I go down on the right side, just as if I would fill up two pages, left, right, one after the other, by writing.

Now, I didn't search yet for a mm prog where I could do this by option, automatically, but that's not the real prob here, because of the consistency of the graphical representation in MM and in most / all mm's.

But as soon as you get to automatic transfer / "traduction" of your data between IMS and mm, or if you get to a mm component within your IMS, this "how the data is automatically distributed on the screen (and on paper)" prob will enter the scene and probably make useless any such automatic "dual data representation" worthless for more than one, either because it does it "the usual way" - I'd be out, then, or because it does it my way, which could mean many traditional user of mm's will find it unusable, them having always left the graphical representation of their data within their mm on default = clockwise.

Hence, the necessity to do some "research" first in order to know HOW mm users do it - it could be that many of them would like to do it as I do, once they will have started to manually re-arrange their branches, but without having done so up to know, and perhaps my assumption is wishful thinking only.

So, this uncertainty is another big obstacle to any such implementation (be it interconnection, be it implementing an internal component).

III

Clones. The more I work with mm's (in MM 8.2, as said), the more I miss clones, i.e. items / branches being on several maps simultaneously, and updated from anywhere - of course, we have got here the same problem as with UR and every other IMS: The updating must affect even clones being situated in NON-OPEN maps or databases, which means that in every (?) current IMS, there isn't but cloning of items / sub-trees within the CURRENT db, at best.

Sideline: Why do I need clones in my maps, when otherwise defending use of clones, within the IMS, just for special branches / db's there, i.e. prospects by area, by potential, etc., or (for an author) the personnel of his drama, by themes and by scenes, and such uses?

Because I started to get get out all my things related to planning, to todoing, to deciding, etc., from the depths of my IMS and into the mm map system, and of course, within THIS frame of thinking, clones are an absolute necessity.

In other words, the traditional problem "car assurance in car or in assurance" isn't a real problem, since a simple link will do here, from the side the car ass. is not, to the side where you put the car ass., so there would probably be car, with a link to ass., and ass, incl. car ass. - the same applies to any such "reference data" prob, and even less so, not even links would be necessary, most of the time, just item "car", then first child "assurance SEE assurance" (as link or not) (and other such), then a divider line, and elsewhere the item "assurance", then first child "incl. car assurance", then a divider line, and the "car assurance" further down anywhere within this block of perhaps dozens of children for various assurances.

But as said, within your "planning world", it's totally otherwise: there, multiple cloning is a necessity - but today's mm sw's do NOT offer them, it seems.

A citation from MM:

https://community.mindjet.com/mindje...parents-1bk5vg

"Because the current maps are just hierarchical constructs, it is impossible to represent situations, where a child branch has many parents. Of course we can create additional relations, but this is definitely not the same." = seems to be an official statement from Mindjet.

Then the poster goes on with asking for clones, and he gets a "3 people like this idea", for a post 10 months old and tagged "MM 2012".

Which means that not even MM does have clones, with a 6- or 7-digit number of users (= in many corporations, and because of cheap university licenses) - this is a disaster.

And then, OF COURSE it is perfectly possible to have clones, inter-db-wise, inter-file-wise, as it is possible to have search over multiple db's (UR's missing inter-db-search, anyone?): You just maintain a little db with references, and containing the respective data, and for any opening of such a map, this db is checked for any changes that might have occured within this map = within the cloned branches in this map, in the meanwhile; then, these changes are worked into the map in question, before its being displayed.

The alternative solution would be to update any such map with clones being altered within a current map, by the prog opening the other map in the background, without displaying it, and doing the necessary change immediately, then save the other map again; the information which other maps contain which clones of clones within the current map, would be present in any such map containing clones, anyway.

Sorry for being rather technical, but currently, there seems to be NOT ONE really perfect IMS, so my "work" of imagining such a system must rely, in big parts, upon just imagination even of the intermediate steps to get to such perfect sw - I'd greatly prefer to have existing sw available that came nearer the desirable "end result", instead of constantly even having to imagine the necessary intermediate solutions - that would greatly enhance the precision of what I could say.

Hence my constant begging for realizing at least some intermediate steps to a perfect IMS, for my imagining further enhancements to become more focused.

Anyway, my next step will be to have a further look at mm sw and probably get the one that first will come out with clones, even if these clones are only possible in some "grouped maps" environment where all these maps must be opened together, each time. My MM maps just are about 35 kb each, so there would not be any problem to open even 100 such maps at the same time (but I hope that they could be grouped within a tree structure, since having 100 tabs wouldn't be a realistic solution here).

As smart readers will have understood, my dual way, MM plus IMS, being just another try to have get to that "super level" that is absent from any existing IMS, in order to work within that "super level", and NOT work within my referential data bulk.

This is a problem we ALL have, all the more so my astonishment that so few people see the prob here.

There have been some books, from a German woman, who has been defending strict discrimination of "work files" and "reference files", between your physical lever files and so on, some years ago. The problem, of course, being, that much stuff is reference AND working material at the same time, and additional prob is, this intersection is plastic, and moving all the time. In theory, computer power should / MUST finally bring a viable solution to this permanent problem THAT EATS UP, for everyone, for every corporation, lotsa working time and effort that could both be much better deployed on real tasks bringing "revenue" (be it commercial or scientific)), so it's revolting that there is no solution yet. And worse, that there is no developer out there who's available for doing some good work here, in order to leave the pack and become vanguard for a time, then get BIG revenue.

The first IMS that will really work, would grasp big markets, very big ones. It's a pity.

[schferk]

(Edit of the above impossible since > 10k chars.)

EDIT [of the above] : Screaming Idiocy

In FreeMind / sourcefourge, there are two discussion on clones,

http://sourceforge.net/projects/free.../topic/1051440

and especially

http://sourceforge.net/projects/free.../topic/1022954

Both are from 2004 (!!!). In the latter one, the developer wishes to distinguish between natural and adoptive parents (see the other thread here), calling them fathers and unclues, in order to avoid recurson problems (see the other thread here). "Of course", nothing has been done about it in 8 years, but now see this thread:

http://freemind.sourceforge.net/wiki...r_enhancements

In fact, while FreeMind almost does nothing, re further development, these "Requests_for_enhancements" are virtually endless: That's blatant idiocy, and of course, it reminds me of my own asking for enhancements in sw fori where in fact active development's having come to a standstill, more or less, is the matter, not possible high-brow enhancements.

So I'm questioning myself if I'm not as much an idiot as those FM users going into lengths for backing up their FM wishes, when in fact, even many years later, FM is certainly one of the WORST mm sw out there.

Sideline: While I criticised the pcworld "reviewer" for the blatant primitiveness in his "reviews" yesterday, please look here, for an example of a virtual perfect intro into a subject many of yours will be interested in (judging by the views of this thread here):

http://truongnghiem.wordpress.com/20...-vs-outlining/

EDIT [of this post here] :

What I'm asking for is technically possible, and has been realized many ago ago, in another environment. I own Visio 2002, and there, there ARE clones, to other maps, but only within the "organigramme" template (= those kind of Warnier/Orr diagrams, not from left to right, but turned 90 degrees to the right, which makes them floating top-down).

Unfortunately, these templates are good for nothing else, and I tried! (Then I searched books about Visio, later version, in order to see if this functionality had been applied to other templates, but it seems it has not. Problem with trialling Visio (which I have avoided) is, as with other MS sw, that once you trialed it once, you will never be able to trial it again, even if you restitute your image which you had made anterior to your MS sw trialling - I have no idea how they succeed at this exploit, but in kicking the user in the you know what, MS has always been very strong. Hence my reliance on books and googling, for the respective current Visio capabilities-or-not.)

EDIT 2 :

Here - a mostly Mac-site not updated anymore, but being a gold mine for deeply detailed and highly developed info,

http://www.atpm.com/10.08/atpo.shtml

says (the Mac-only sw) Tinderbox does all what I'd need, technically speaking. But I started this thread in order to explain my need for DE-COMPACTING "working-info", whilst the Tinderbox concept COMPACTS everything in a way that I'd prefer working on paper only if ever they might be left the last working computer sw. Your experience might differ, but then, Tinderbox is presented as the technical non-plus-ultra almost everywhere, when in fact rather few people use it on a daily basis, so I dare say we've got another example here for highest-brow sw where the gui mastering doesn't follow the technical expertise. (Whenever I see a Tinderbox map, the term "sw for blockheads" appears in my field of vision - "blockhead" literally speaking, of course: sw not for simpletons, but for people with square brains - prob is, there ain't any such people, out there.)

[Jon Polish]

I'm pretty sure that Freemind implemented clones a few betas ago. They are currently on Beta 8 (Sept 2012).

Jon

[schferk]

Jon, thank you a lot, by googling, this info doesn't become evident (EDIT: I meant by "mind map cloned item" and such, "freemind clone" will find it immediately! Introduced in May, 2012). If that's working, it'd turn the mm world upside down: A(n even last year) rather primitive freeware has the key function missing from any known commercial sw. Will report back.

EDIT : The user guide is for v. 0.8.0, and the info I found about cloning in FM:

http://freemind.sourceforge.net/wiki...e_New_Features

seems to indicate that cloning is possible within the same map only (I've become a cynic and think that they would tout it if was otherwise, AND overall functionality last time I trialled FM was so bad that I come to the same conclusion from this pov. And there is, "This should work after saving and loading later on, too.", which seems to indicate even cloning within a given map is stable. AND you get what you pay for (e.g. DNS Legal: 949 euro, about 1250 bucks), so re sourceforge... I said I'm a cynic.). And yes, I've ceased to download all sort of crap just for trialling, I'm not believing in Santa Claus anymore. (Cf. GiveAwayOfTheDay with all that crap, crippled versions and so on. Most sw out there is only time-consuming rubbish.)

In a positive mood: The above-mentioned FM wish list is a good point of departure if you like to construct perfect mm sw (i.e. sometimes, collaboration is very helpful).

[schferk]

More details

I - Visio

I fear I mixed up my real experience with retroactive wishful thinking. In fact, within the organigramme template only, there is a rectangle stencil / symbol that can indeed be cloned, but I think now that's only possible within the same drawing. Anyway, both ways for the technical implementation of multi-map symbol cloning are valid and could be realized by whomever willing to do it.

II - Another advantage of mm

In an IMS like UR, you'd have multiple items, each with a (rather short) title and then real content OR rather short details, explanations, etc. So, in analysis / projecting / planning / etc., you'd have lots of items, with their titles BEING displayed, and with lots of minor details, perhaps some words, perhaps 3 lines within the content / editor pane, and which would NOT be visible.

Now here comes, perhaps, the idea to get a 1-pane outliner, in order to have these short details visible, which in UR and such are invisible. That's perfectly possible, of course, but remember, a 1-pane outliner will not solve your problem of too-much-compactness of your "musing data".

Hence the interest of a mm prog: Here, you'd have a central topic (level 0 - bear this in mind, please, and if you consider the source item being level 1, add 1 to any number that follows), the name of the map in question, then, around this, some specific topics (level 1), and then, each of these have their respective sub-tree, with the specific subjects / ideas / etc. (level 2), and then, further down, they often have some details (level 3).

If you don't do lots of single maps, but only one very-big-map or just several rather-big-maps, you could be here at level 4 or level 5, instead of level 3, and that's as well as the system I detail here, given the fact that most mm progs (= don't buy any other / any crippled, "Personal" = not-"Business" version that can't do it) allow for switching from "big picture" to "display this branch only", and back again. Anyway, let's consider the level 3 as the "put descriptive details here" level and go back to our example.

In the following, then, you might look after levels 6 and 7, when I mention levels 2 and 3, no problem. The important is, I want to speak of those 2 levels where (in my case) 2 in UR would be single items titles, and the next level (in my case 3) would be the content of that same item.

So, again, we have level 1 containing what in UR would be headings (= not individual item titles, but the titles of "items" that in fact are parents to a group / subgroup".

And we have level 2, the UR item title. Now for level 3, i.e. the content of that same item.

It goes without saying that whenever you've got real detail here, a mm is NOT the right place to put that in, and you should perhaps put it into the NOTE field of that mm item, but perhaps not, since those note fields they are often bad, often worse, from their capabilities, and especially since they would constitue a FORTH separate entity for your things: You'll have the file system, the mm maps, UR or another IMS, so things in a forth body would not be a good idea imo, in most cases (there might be special cases where all SPECIFIC data go into a mm map system, and the notes there, and nothing else contained elsewhere - that would seem to be ok with me).

So, if there is real content, preferably do a link (from the mm item on level 2) to a UR item, or anything along those lines; anyway, such "real content" backgrounds of planning items should rather be the exception: In most cases, you'll get nothing, just two words, or perhaps even 2 or 3 lines of text.

Now, what to do with that "mini content"? Very simply, it'll become your mm level 3, and if it's too long for being visually ok within one level 3 item "under" the corresponding level 2 item, just split it up into 2 or 3 or 4 different such level 3 siblings - this cutting up will also force you to bring a max. of order / neatness into these bits. In exceptional cases, you could also split this level 3 then further up into level 4 bits, but my thinking is that whenever you must do this, you'd be far better off by thinking about it again and doing more level 2 items instead, with their details then in level 3 siblings.

This way, "EVERYTHING IS VISIBLE" (AND DE-COMPACTED, which isn't possible in 1-pane outliners), and that's a hefty advantage of mm over other techniques whenever you do planning or analysing work.

And, mm is a perfect means to "teach you" my motto (I have mentioned elsewhere): Make it hierarchical, yes, in order to get a first and main systematic framework for your material, BUT HOLD THAT HIERARCHY AS FLAT AS POSSIBLE:

And when I say, mm maps are perfect teachers for that motto to be adhered to, it's totally simple: When your mm map looks convoluted, you did NOT adhere to my motto, and when you re-arrange things as long as it gets to become a much better-looking map, heureka, it will be one considerably flattened-out!

Hence, mm maps are a PROOF for the validity of my "hold it flat" tenet, hence the multiplication of maps OR big maps, that in their big-map version necessarily convoluted, but that will - if you follow my maxim "more siblings, less grand-grand-grand-children" on the deepest levels - be as neat as the multiple maps, once you go down to the sub-branches that would constitute separate maps within the first model (= items level 0 in multiple maps, so items 1 in a big-map, here levels 1, 2, 3, 4 becoming levels 2, 3, 4, 5), and trigger "display current branch only".

III - Power Markers 1, 2, 3

I've been too late. In fact, there has been a work-around for clones, not over several maps - "of course" not, given the fact that nobody out there's willing to get into real coding troube but then present overwhelming results -, but over one map at least, which is the reason for my detailing the acceptability of the big-map paradigm above in Part II.

In fact, if you analyse a very big project, you would not split it up into many connected separate maps, but you would do a big map for that project, but work only on these level 1-entities (= which are equivalent to the level 0-source-items in multiple maps), by doing bookmarks or such for these level-1 items, go to them by shortkeys or mouse clicks in a list (as you would do with multiple maps in order to display them), and then, after triggering (best: by macro = 1 step: "show "virtual map 4 within a 20-map "big-map" AND ONLY show that "map 4" there"), and then work on that virtual sub-map, as you'd work onto map 4 of 20 different maps.

But now comes Power Marker (Poma, PM is Project Management, let's not create chaos) - ok, we're in Poma, und thus, MM country here. Even without Poma, you can put various "markers" onto your items, and then, you can "filter" for such markers, and even for combinations of them, but this will give weird graphical presentations. So back to Poma: It creates a second outline view (the main outline view being implemented in native MM), but here, the tree is by the marker(s) of your choice.

You got it, Poma for MM creates alternative trees, on-the-fly (cf. askSam)!

Now you wouldn't expect to have this even in the graphics, but then, you don't have clones, so you'll assign categories to items, with markers, and then, you'll get that tree showing these "marked" items only. That's far from perfect, but it's far more than you'll get anywhere else, except perhaps for clones in FM maps whenever they might be debugged.

Now, Poma 1 was 40 bucks (I suppose), Poma 2 was 40 bucks. Should have known about it then.

Well, then Mindjet get aware that Poma was a feature MM should have got by native implementation - and they are perfectly right about that. Now, what they did, is this: They bought Poma (hence non-availabilty from both sources for Poma 2 from then on), and they quickly brought out Poma version 3, with (if I dare trust the web, some Mindjet blablah about Poma, and minor debugging) - and they sold it for 2 times the price, which made that 80 bucks.

Should have bought then, anyway. (but wasn't aware of it of course)

Now, MM 2012, with integrated Poma! And the same is also integrated into version 11 (again, attention please, "11" comes AFTER "2012" - you cannot repeat this enough since at this very moment, the web is saturated with offers like "MM 2012, ONLY 430 euro / 600 bucks" - well, not even the current version 11 is even more expensive than that).

So, in my case, I'm stuck with a free version 8.2, without the chance to get Poma for that, and the total unwillingness to buy version 11, with Poma integrated, but at a price of more than 400 euro.

But then, I got an old trial version of Poma on my hdd (downloaded when I hadn't got MM yet, then forgot about it), so I'll can at least trial now (14 days only, I fear).

SO, I'm looking forward to buying, from someone having bought / updated to MM 2012 or MM 11, his unused Poma 2 (version 1 seems to have been buggy) or 3. (Look out for it in the web, on ebay worldwide or such: nada.)

Fact is: MM 11 is expensive and not outstanding, but it has got very good and highly needed features, so as for the competition.

Sideline: There are some PM offerings for MM that rely on synching back and forth with MS Outlook, i.e. relying heavily on Outlook's corresponding features in order to make them available for MM. I got both progs, but I'm not a fan of that integration. The MM-inherent graphic capabilities should be enhanced, not some info features from elsewhere brought within MM maps instead: That's good in its own way, but it's not a good replacement for all that's missing.

I'm looking forward to reconstitute my c: image every 30, 28, 21...14 (OMG!) days in the future, before being able to afford MM 12 or 13, at last.

Which shows that even third-rate solutions get much addiction (if not love), when first-rate solutions ain't available at any price.

[schferk]

I

EDIT (above >10k) :

Have got 1 (14 days) and 3 (30 days), and the user guide for 3 - almost 80 pages! - lotsa detail for a third-class work-around...

II

Oh, and there's also a VERY smart (and successful) little gem: GyroQ (gyronix.com). I don't see the necessity to buy the 50 bucks prof version, but even the 30 bucks standard version has a very neat feature.

First, let me explain. You trigger GyroQ from wherever, you enter "must get milk from the grocer", you enter "enter", and you go on with your work, i.e. you gather, in the neatest possible way, ideas, things to do, etc., etc.

At the end of the day - or whenever you like -, you open MM and will have got all these little things into a special MM map, and from which you then will distribute all this to the right target locations.

So much for version 1.

Version 2 (= the one you now buy for 30 bucks) goes way beyond this:

You trigger GyroQ (let's say by F12 or whatever), then you enter "gr must get milk", and the "must get milk" thing will be put as a child to the branch "grocer" within that special map!

You'll do the same with 19 more possible such codes (separated by a space, as you will have understood by your own means, I'm sure), and there are even some very special codes that trigger more elaborate macros, e.g. a swot analysis (I doubt if this is really needed from an external mini tool, instead of from within the map, preferably).

Of course, I know, this is all rather rudimentary since it would also be possible - but isn't with the current version of GyroQ - to put such clippings to the "inboxes" of the maps in question, or of the level 1 virtual maps within a "big-map", by according codes.

But that code thing is really smart, and I say this all the more so since I have discovered such coding for my own needs, years ago in a macro tool, since being replaced by even more elaborate macros in AHK.

Whenever I put a clipping into a new item, in my IMS, from let's say IE8, I do F7, then I enter (in a pop-up dialog) the title of the new item = sibling I want to create where the focus is at the time in my IMS, then press "enter".

Now, if I want to create a child instead of a sibling, I dont do
F7TitleEnter, but

F7.TitleEnter

And if I am in a siblings range that all constitute children of an item I want the new item to be created as a sibling to, i.e. when I want to create an uncle of the current focus item, I do
F7,TitleEnter

(on my kb, the keys being "bnm,.-", so it's partly mnemonic)

And when I want to create the new item within my general inbox, since the current item is not suitable as a sibling or parent of the new item, I do
F7;TitleEnter

Since I got about 10 intermediate files (as I explained in length), with 10 more specific inboxes, I can also do, for the new item to be created within the "m" inbox (all these are 1-character):
F7-mTitleEnter

And since I got, in every one of these 10 intermediate files, a list of all the respective more specific files (all these would be sub-branches of your big tree in UR), and all these entries there function as "most-specific" inboxes, I can also do:
F7-mg-TitleEnter

in order to create the new item as a child of the mg entry within the m file - the second "-" being necessary because these "mg" and such can be 2 or 3 chars long, but an "m" before the "mg" isn't necessary because the "mg" might be in several such 1-char files, but only the one "mg" being in the "m" file should be served as an inbox; and how to target that "mg" entry within the "m" file? In going to the m file, then making sure focus is in the tree, then "home", then just entering not the "mg", but an ".mg", and this isn't search but the normal way to go to items in trees, just be sure there isn't another "mg" before, and in order to be always sure of this, file names in my files begin with a ".", that's only there as a coding sign, in order to jump to ".mg", by entering ".mg", or to OPEN the mg file when I press "enter" on such a ".mg" entry.

So you see, there is a lot of coding and code-checking going on behind the scenes, and a lot of working on strings, but on the surface, it's more than easy, SLICK TO THE EXTREME.

And in fact, I just decided to NOT buy GyroQ, in view of the fact that there's isn't but 20 such codes you can do there. By AHK, I can do the same, not as pretty, but with much more functionality, much more codes to be processed, as I detailed above.

Up to know, I had just elaborate creating-new-items-exactly-where-I-want macros for importing clippings from IE8, but it's more than easy to do just the same for ideas to be imported into multiple MM maps - or into your various UR sub-branches.

III

Oh, and for that, YOU SHOULD UPDATE TO UR VERSION 5 !

Because with this update, you'll get 200 favorites instead of just some, and if I were you, to write the according UR macros, I'd do it with jumping to favorites! 100 inboxes, 100 favorites left for other purposes.

WARNING, though: Once you'll create AHK macros, YOU'LL NEVER STOP !


EDIT : Oh, important detail, I forgot: Of course, in II, when the entry dialog is displayed, the screen will have changed to my IMS (it will revert to IE8 later on), so that I can SEE which one is the current file, and the current item there, when I do my entry (perhaps coded accordingly, or not), so I never must decide on these in the dark!

AND : You will have got that the interest of "coding" (those leading ".", ",", etc.) is to avoid those amateurishly-designed dialogs that force the user to click on several checkboxes, buttons, and so on: Worse, if it's checkboxes, you don't even know beforehand at which state they are at any given moment, so the user has to check, to act his mouse, perhaps on 2 or 3 elements within the box - all this is amateurish rubbish - and the GyroQ people HAVE GOT THIS, and do it a much better way, as I do. Just their SCOPE is too limited, 20 codes for similar level-1 target items within only ONE pre-selected map isn't enough, when you could have various targets in multiple maps, for the same "price" (meaning, there isn't any additional coding difficulty for the developer, but it would make a big enhancement for the user: hence my, again, doing it by AHK).

AND : It seems that Poma 2, and hence Poma 3 (not speaking of Poma1), in spite of the 78 pages of User Manual, only can extract attributes lists for ONE attribute in a row, not for a combination of 2 or 3. But again, even that, having things together by one attribute, in a clickable (and I hope, exportable??? YES YES YES!!!) list, that might be graphically spread over (remember, you need the big-map, since no assembling over different maps!) 1,200 or 2,000 items, is a treat, comparing to what the competition delivers.

[schferk]

Miscellanea

I

In order to make this perfectly clear, I do NOT advocate putting your reference material into any mm sw (you can read such crazy advice in the web); remember they say "if all you have got is a hammer, all your problems appear to be nails" (or something like that); the problem is twofold: mm sw is unsuited for reference material; on the other hand, IMS' are not exactly unsuited for planning, idea finding, etc., but there might be better tools to do that.

II

That Gyronix do NOT allow you downloading any (15 day) trial sw with a disposable mail account but manually check for the validity of your data - the reason why I never trialled that thing. But now, I found a download address that functions direct, without giving them your info first:

http://www.gyronix.com/fulldownloads.php

The "Results Manager" there is expensive and does NOT seem to do what I want (?), it manages multiple pages, but it seems to be sorts of a data-pushing tool for serving a "dashboard" - will perhaps have a look, but it seems more to be a PM thing (and an ugly one for that) - as said above, and as with MM as a depository for stored data, many people out there try to convince you to use MM for just everything, and of course for PM, and the RM seems to be the thing that would help you in doing that (badly).

As for the "DecisionMill 3", well, version 2 seems to have been at 50 bucks, whilst v. 3 is 290 bucks or such... (but since I know now how to download all this stuff, why not trialling?)

Whilst I'm positive of scripting for my IMS, to tell the truth, I don't know at this point how to do the respective macros for MM (should search for the MM "programming" reference or such) - so after all, I'll perhaps run GyroQ in parallel with my similar AHK macros for the IMS. And here's the good new:

At this time, you can buy (standard = "essential") GyroQ for about about 16 bucks (9 English pounds plus vat, to be precise, which is a steal), incl. vat (instead of 29 bucks plus vat), here:

http://www.murge.com/products/mindMa...oq/pricing.asp

The only quirk here is, payment by google (!) is mandatory (so I will have to create a google account just for that, then forget about that account and delete all possible cookies and such).

III

And finally, there also is "Mind Map Navigator", for about 50 bucks (for MM 7 and 8 which don't have a native outline, but for just 9 or 11 bucks for MM 9 and later, which DO have these native outlines), and which does an outline... but from ALL open MM maps - could become convoluted? If I want 1,800 items in a row, I use my IMS, right?

But then, it also searches over all open MM maps, and gives a result table - which makes me wonder if there is a viable possibility to have neat and quick results with this when you do a global search for "tags" within the items (meaning at the end of the "title" or of the "text" which, remember, is technically the same here in MM items), perhaps in the form .ap .xt or #2 #tp or whatever.

Remember here that you need an external search tool like dtsearch if you want to do the same with several db's in UR, e.g., so this way of pseudo-3-dimensionality would perhaps be acceptable, especially in light of the fact that here you could have such functionality with multiple maps, whereas Power Markers (external or now native in MM) will always force you to build up a monster map and then handle that; connected, multiple maps are so much neater, and so I have high hopes in "MMNforMM" before having trialled it at least (and no need for illegal continuous use of defunct trial sw either).

P.S. Looking forward to use GyroQ, will be a joy I'm sure! And will result in even lower fuss in your way of putting down your ideas, meaning that you'll put it there even when, for the fuss of switching to your IMS and back, you would probably not save an idea "too little to justify the effort" - which means, the barrier is lowered, and hence your "flow" is increased... even for the better ideas. What I mean is, the more it is easy to store even minor ideas, i.e. EVERY possible idea, the more likely it will become that even the better ideas will come much more easy.

[schferk]

SORRY for having mislead you (and new insight into TheBrain).

Forget my musings about mm "big-maps", about Power Markers, and about MM 11 being worth its price in view of it having Poma integrated; as I already said, any "real clone" solution that's not going trans-maps is worthless, too.

In fact, I didn't try big-maps, I only imagined them, in order to become Poma (or MM 11's integrated Poma) a workable work-around - forget it.

When you imagine big-maps containing 1, 2, 3 dozen of "virtual maps", don't fall into my misconception to imagine them as big concept maps / cognitive maps, with their perhaps 1, 2, 3 dozen of planitary sub-system: I had those pictures in my mind, also PB/TB, so my mistake to explain to you that your level 1 items could replace my level 0 items - in the mm tools I know, they can NOT.

In fact, in an mm (correct me if I'm wrong), only the one 0 level item then gets radial children, whilst any level from 1 down gets children not in the carpet, but in the rug direction, i.e. you'll get the W/O kind of descendants, left-to right or right-to left, there's NO multiple sun systems.

But we convened, if I dare say, that mm's idea / main advantage is RADIAL representation of factors, points, details (and I said that this works so well, might be so because such graphics trigger similar "physically working maps" in our brain tissue), hence of NOT representing them in a false sequence, as in sequential text or in W/O diagrams ("false" not meaning that for programmational top-down developments (but form them only), W/O would be wrong) -

and then, if it were otherwise, millions of people out there would use b-liner, whilst in fact (or from what Mindjet say), millions of people out there use MM alone (as said, they have numerous advantageous university licenses, making MM free for such students, and that greatly helps in creating the real big numers - but fact is, plenty of corporations use MM alone, whilst b-liner doesn't even has got the necessary money to debug for the bugs you bring to their attention).

This meaning, no way to do a big-map in MM or elsewhere, since your poor sw (Poma, Poma integrated into MM 2012 and 11) will then be able to list those items sharing this attribute, but you won't have virtual mm maps to work in, it's just 20 or so of W/O diagrams, not 20 or so mm maps.

This meaning, very clearly, MJ bought the WRONG add-in: Yes, the prettier one, but not a functional one - any mm map becoming big enough to make "necessary" such (one-map-only) add-ins as Poma, are misconceptions in themselves, to begin with!

In other words, BREAK DOWN mm maps, again and again and again, and THEN they will become most useful for you!

...

[schferk]

GyroQ Update :

For non-programmers, it's impossible to access internal MM commands (whilst for programmers, there are ways). On the other hand, GyroQ (Prof only, "Essential" is worthless, so we speak about 49 bucks plus VAT here, but it's more than worth it) opens up a whole ecosystem around MM, by its integrated GyroActivator which is nothing other than a little macro language giving access to many internal MM commands you otherwise couldn't access by your own non-programming means, and which then can be triggered by the GryroQ dialog, or, in a much smoother way, by any (commercial or free) external macro / scripting tool (that you use for all your things anyway) that is able (that's the only, easy condition there) to do "launch program" commands.

In other words, you launch the little GyroQ scripts by your macro tool, e.g. AHK (or even text expander tools), where you assign kb shortcuts or special trigger words to commands like

PathOfGyroQ.exe "NameOfYourGyroQScript"

That's all. So you buy GyroQ Prof in order to get the underlying GyroActivator macro language, and then, you'll be able to do anything of what I said I'd like to do above, and much more, and it's up to you if you additionally use the "native" use of GyroQ, i.e. its above-described dialog on a regular basis, here and there, or even not at all.

You can download an about 90-page pdf that explains it all:

https://gyronix.zendesk.com/attachme...2-Help-Eng.pdf

But then, even better, under the url

http://www.activityowner.com

you'll get a splendid collection of scripts, tools, advice and help for that whole ecosystem that the developer has constructed around his GyroQ, and his ResultsManager (that costs a whopping 285 bucks plus VAT), but then, even what you'll find here around GyroQ, i.e. without having to buy the RM, is outstanding, incl. the (free) Outlinker tool, for connecting MM to MS Outlook, see also

www.outlinker.com

(Btw, I see there that armsys (who's also very active in this forum these days) has been knowning this GyroQ MM ecosystem for years, but then, I admit that it's only up to any person and his own decision, if he's going to share his knowledge that's clearly in the general interest, like I do, or if he's prefers to withheld any knowledge to himself, participating in fori in order to get even more info for himself, and more or less exclusively so. As said, I don't dare say the latter stance is criticizable in any way, even when I obviously have never shared it.)

So, it seems that MM, with the help of GyroQ Prof., could perhaps be made into a very smart DOUBLE use of being dashboard-AND-idea-collection system for UR, the former by means of UR's outstanding feature (in fact, there ain't so much competitors that make this available to you) of allowing deep links, and even for the latter, UR's deep linking feature would be very helpful it seems to me, whenever you just collect ideas within MM (i.e. avoid mixing-up of idea collection and dashboarding, with multiple linking), but have systematically a link from the source item of these MM idea maps to the corresponding (and mostly rather high-or intermediate-level there) UR items.

I'll certainly share my findings about smart interconnection between MM and UR, as I will have possibly found them in some weeks or some months, and this independently from the fact that there obviously are long-time MM-GyroQ-UR users (neither of which I am) who technically could have shared their respective smart hints, from their thorough experience with such a combination, years ago.

Anyway, it seems to me that a smartly devised MM-UR-Outlook (with a little help by Gyronix, thru 49 bucks) interactive workflow, being it within a small network or being it single-user only, clearly must have the utmost potential for your productivity; it would then be time that UR did a little homework to be on par within such an extraordinary combi.

(In theory, the same could be done with other such mm tools, but then, the missing link would be a tool like GyroQ - which clearly shows the exceptional benefits of a (marketing-leader) sw around which there has been developed an ecosystem of its own (similar to Word, Excel, Outlook, Access, sql db's, etc.).