Although I've basically settled on Visual Mind as my graphical outliner choice, I'm trialing a product that takes a different approach to graphical outlining, one clearly outside the "mind mapping" genre. What attracted me to this product is the seriousness apparent on the site and the absence of most of the flowery mind-mapping hype you usually get.

Visual Concept has a different metaphor for subordindination. As opposed to some variant of indentation in uses inclusion, as in a Venn diagram. I haven't worked out yet what difference this actually makes in practical terms. One consequence seems to be that it's harder to get a lot of depth. For depth V-C emphasizes stringing diagrams together and provides the tools to do that. A more interesting difference is that it seems to encourage clustering before naming. The natural way to build a diagram with V-C is to cluster ideas together and then come up with the basis for the cluster, whereas in Visual Mind and other mind mapping programs, as in conventional outline editors, it's more natural to pick out the commonality first.

Has anyone had any experience with this program or care to try it out and tell me what you think. (http://www.visual-concept.co.uk/

Stephen R. Diamond

Stephen, I looked at it quickly -- intriging, although I am not sure that I understand it. I'll download it on the w/e.

Daly

I took a quick look at the web site. One thing bothered me. The web site hadn't been updated in two years. Do you know if this is an evolving program? A moribund web site is always a red flag to me, perhaps unfairly. There's one site I check regularly that has had the same "Quote of the Day" for the past year and a half. Not exactly confidence building.

Steve Z.

It's been almost two weeks since I first wrote to Visual Concept's developer with some specific concerns about the program and one since I re-wrote attaching a few screenshots to better demonstrate some of the issues. I've had no replies to either of my messages, which may be an answer in itself re development and support of the application.

FYI, I'm copying below my main concerns.

(1) The language I am using Visual Concept with is Greek; this presents no problem in the info items and cluster titles, as the font and script for these can be set to Greek, but it does with the text notes. In the Cluster Properties and Table View these appear fine, but in the standard view the pop-up windows show gibberish. There seems to be no way to set the font / language script for the pop-up windows within the program.

(2) I would be using Visual Concepts as part of an integrated system
of knowledge management and presentation; this includes outlining and mind mapping software that can exchange info as indented text outlines. With the exception of flat text lists of items, Visual Concept can't import from other files, i.e. does not maintain hierarchies. It can export to text, but again, hierarchy is not denoted, though the titles/ideas structure is maintained.

(3) Last, but not least, I was interested in knowing what the development perspectives are for the program.

alx