Mind versus tree navigation; html versus rtf editing

Posted by Graham Rhind
Mar 9, 2007 at 09:07 PM

Two threads in one ....

I was playing around with I-Navigation today (http://www.exswap.com/ - looks good on the site but was a disappointment to me when I tried it), when it struck me that the outliners with all the power (ADM, Whizfolders, Surfulator, Zoot) and many others all have tree based navigation systems. Programs with sophisticated mind-like interfaces have weak data storage and management capabilities. I-Navigator makes a great mind map, but what can be stored at each node is very basic. Personal Brain, which has great potential as an interface, is still really just a novel way of finding and opening files - a graphical Windows Explorer plus a little note taking - and it has hardly moved on in years (though I know a new version 4 is being created). Other programs have been designed purely for mind mapping, which is not something I have much use for and which only scratches the surface of what might be done.

I can understand that developers of these swish navigation systems have been putting all the work into making the graphics look good, but I think adding the note taking or information storage abilities of a program like Whizfolders into a program like Personal Brain would be a real boon.

Is there a program which has the power but uses a non-tree based navigation system?

Which brings me on to my second thought (I must have been having a good day ....). There are programs which base themselves on rtf, such as Whizfolders, which gives great editing and export possibilities but brings limitations such as poor image support, poor table support and inability to properly store html snippets. Then there are programs such as Surfulator which harness the power of html but don’t allow the editing flexibility of rtf systems. Are there any outliners which have managed to merge the two environments successfully?

Graham