Re: Request MSWin outliners with I,A,1,a etc structure?

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

Outliners.com Message ID: 2798

Posted by sub
2005-02-21 05:39:10

[Graham: Well, I find that I like switching between a Mindmap and an outline for general idea generation and structure, but also find Concept diagrams useful for the same thing]

When I was initially looking into these tools, I found the following message by Stephen D. eye-opening:

[ http://www.outliners.com/discuss/msgReader$1778?mode=day ]

A concept map really is not a graphical outline. Outlines deal in hierarchies, and concept maps graph relations that are not necessarily hierarchical. But to capture these non-hierarchical relations, the connections between the boxes, not just the boxes themselves, must be labeled.

The academic proponents see the labeling of the connections as the hardest but most important part of conceptual mapping. In an outline the hierarchical relations speak for themselves, but if you have a box A and a box B, and you connect them to show a non-hierarchical relation—say one of causality—you have to name the arrow as causal to capture it. Nobody seems to be doing much of that, which is why a mind map can be reduced to an outline, but a concept map can’t.

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