Consider this hierarchy

I. Knowledge management
A. Textual outliners
1. BrainStorm
2. ADM
3. Graphic outliners
B. PIMs
C. Outliners

Problem: to use mark and gather to put textual outliners and graphic outliners as children of Outliners, with BrainStorm and ADM as its children, while moving Graphic outliners out of the textual outliners category, and make it a sibling of textual outliners. Simply put, to organize this correctly.

In Visual Mind, I select Textual Outliners and I select Graphic Outliners (even though it is currently a child of Textual Outliners) and move them to child position under Outliners. BrainStorm and ADM, being unselected, remain children of textual outliners and become grandchildren of outliners. Graphic outliners, having been separately selected, is moved to the position of the drag, becoming a child of Outliners. I submit that this is how it should work. (I'm curious, Alex, if MindGenius and FreeMind do it this way, as they aren't now on my computer.)

In Notemap, if I try this, Graphic Outliners, despite having been selected independently, remains a child of Textual Outliners. All the children of a moved topic remain its children. The same is true of Inspiration. In BrainStorm, it isn't possible to select at more than a single level. If you split the screen, only the focused part functions. So in BrainStorm the issue doesn't arise, but the result is the same--children must be moved with their parent.

This difference in logic has nothing to do with graphic outliners versus textual outliners as such. Visual Mind uses a different logic, that could in principle be used by a textual outliner. (And perhaps was by More--I'm not sure--anyone know? How does Grandview handle this, Steve?) Visual's Mind's logic is stronger, in the logical sense of allowing more distinctions, and in practice it seems to me more powerful and more ergonomic.

Other opinions?

Stephen R. Diamond

How does ADM fare? My prediction was that trying it would crash the program. <g> The program didn't crash, but the result was the least useful and the most illogical. This would be caused by the same malady that might result in a crash: failing to think adequately about the implications of a design decision. What ADM does is puts textual outliners at both places, as non-clone copies. Well, I did say thay ADM was trying to be everything to everyone; maybe it stands to reason that it would embrace incompatible design choices at the same time.

Stephen Diamond

Stephen I just tried your experiment in Freemind. There is no mark and gather. So if you do what you suggest in the ORDER you suggest -- drag subheading graphic outliners, THEN the others to a new parent, it works the way you think it should.

I repeated the experiment in MORE. This time, I did mark the headings to be moved, then gathered them under a new heading. It moved the entire Textual outliners tree under outliners. It did NOT make Graphic outliners a sibling to Textual outliners. (I didn't try it in TAO -- there are only so many computers you can occupy at a single moment.)

So Freemind and MORE follow the same logic. But I see why: it allows the top heading to control. As you say, a different logic, and easily solved by breaking the reorganization into smaller steps, and a certain sequence.

I suppose I can see some advantages to your approach, but it wouldn't tilt my decision for one outliner over another.

I asked Alex " (I'm curious, Alex, if MindGenius and FreeMind do it this way, as they aren't now on my computer.)"

I have mentioned that I tested FreeMind and found it obeys ADM-logic. MindGenius, however, does it the same way as Visual Mind, that is the way I've maintained is the "right" way.

I'll probably have to test Mind Manager by and by.

Stephen Diamond