Mind Mapping?

[Allsop]

Way back in September 2011 the Administrator said, “DEVONthink supports text and very simple outlines (e.g. using rich text lists), but not (yet) mind maps.” (See blog.devontechnologies.com/2011/ … d-mapping/) the “yet” got me thinking and I was wondering if any progress had been made on this front?

[cgrunenberg]

No. It’s still an option for future releases but so far it’s not really a popular request. Therefore there are lots of other requests that have a higher priority, not to mention known shortcomings like the user interface

[Allsop]

Fair enough…your reply is intriguing in that my overiding curiosity prompts to ask what are the “other requests that have a higher priority”? In other words what delights may we look forward to?

[cgrunenberg]

@Allsop

Fair enough…your reply is intriguing in that my overiding curiosity prompts to ask what are the “other requests that have a higher priority”? In other words what delights may we look forward to?

Usually we don’t announce future updates anymore (as we announced stuff too soon in the past), therefore I can’t tell

[Allsop]

Oooh…not even a hint!

[sjk]

“… not to mention known shortcomings like the user interface ” sounds like a hint to me.

[pwjohnson]

Well, I would be interesting in simple mapmapping features.
Or just opening structured data in a popular mindmap software. And/Or reversally visualizing and editing mindmap data as text maps in DTP.
Though I would give my preference to Freemind for being opensource, other software such as XMind do a great job.

[BLUEFROG]

You can view mindmap files if the application has provided a QuickLook plugin for their format.

Is DT good for learning?

Welcome @Kazza If you are going to continue with DEVONthink, yes you should upgrade to DEVONthink 3. The 2.x line is in maintenance now, i.e., only receiving critical bugfixes for things like crashes on launch. Also, 3 is far superior in many ways. Don’t use tags if they don’t fit your way of thinking. Tags, like many things in DEVONthink, are optional. Some people use many; some use none. There’s no right or wrong to it. DEVONthink doesn’t support internal mind-mapping, but you can preview mi…

[BillW]

I find MindNode easy to use & very adaptable

Bill

[BLUEFROG]

Nice. I hear their iOS app is good too.

[benoit.pointet]

I would see two levels of mind-mapping:

1. MM purely at content level: DT allowing to edit mindmaps which then become first-class citizens of the software. I guess it wouldn’t have a lot of advantages over a full-fledged MM tool with QuickLook plugin, except for ease of use, wiki linking, … Here one could play with the idea of markdown-mindmapping: typing a mindmap as a markdown document, which then gets painted into a mindmap.

2. MM as a mean to navigate and enrich the Database structure and navigation experience. One could imagine:

   • a MM-like navigational representation of the groups/tags hierarchy with documents as leafs, providing an overview of the hierarchy (actually a directed graph due to replication possibilities).
   • a MM-like document-centric representation with its parent groups and tags as well as outlinks and inlinks surrounding it, providing a contextual view of the document.
   • acting on those representations (deletion/renaming/moving) would be acting on the DB itself.