Re: GrandView 2.0 castaway sending smoke signals

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Note: This message is from the outliners.com archive kindly provided by Dave Winer.

Outliners.com Message ID: 1768

Posted by srdiamond15
2003-12-28 23:44:02

MindManager doesn’t require a hierarchy—when new ideas arise they can be plopped down anywhere. This allows moving things around to see where they might fit best to be done more easily.

I have done similar things with outlines, but being able to spread things out seems to be helpful to me and the groups I do it with. MindManager also allows collapsing but my favorite part is grabbing a chunk of ideas from one place and moving them elsewhere—much easier to follow what is happening when things are laid out than in an outline. SInce I often do this in trying to make sense of what a group is saying, and the group members are looking at the projected map, this is pretty useful—and often accompanied by a sigh or exclamation.

Words that describe how it works are a poor substitute for playing with it and seeing if it is personally useful.

What do the diagrams you use depict, if I can ask?

If one is working alone and is comfortable with the tools one is using, no need to change. I changed because I had to link smoothly to Word and Powerpoint because of my work environment.

I’m never comfortable with my tools; there always could be something better.

I actually went from Framework(Ashton Tate) to Maxthink to GrandView to Ecco to INspiration to MindManager. There is a windows version of Maxthink out now, btw.

Yes, but there’s little documentation as of yet. I simply don’t know what some of the operations involve, except vaguely, e.g. ‘bin sort;” “fence.” The author is very willing to help by telephone, but I want something to read.

What new, fully functional, and fully supported computer outliners are out there?

In another posting today I mentioned NoteMap and ADM. Another old DOS program resurrected for Windows is called Brainstorm, which seems to me a lot like MaxThink, so far as I’ve figured out MaxThink. Both of these programs focus on one heading and its immediate descendents at a time.

Then there’s Microsoft’s entry, OneNote, which combines an outliner with a free form data base. In one respect it is apparently similar to the mindmaps as you describe them in allowing entry anywhere on a page.

I think that’s pretty much it for Windows outliners with a lot of restructuring power.

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