Mind versus tree navigation; html versus rtf editing

Posted by Daly de Gagne
Mar 18, 2007 at 07:15 PM

Graham, CRIMPer that I am, I have tried PB also, an have found it is OK if it is not too complex. Otherwise I find it heavy going to have a sense of what all is there. So I agree with you re PB4 beta.

Daly

Graham Rhind wrote:
>I think a distinction needs to be made between mind maps (as I know them, which, as
>Cassius said, could be expressed in a tree-like linear form); and non-tree-like
>navigation/outliner systems, such as Personal Brain.
> >An item in a tree can have one
>parent, and multiple children. That’s the basis and at the same time the limitation.
>After that, most tree-like outliners have to think of (mostly awkward) ways of
>creating internal links between branches, such as creating virtual copies of the
>files or having text wiki links.
> >What a tool like Personal Brain allows (or should
>allow) is links from any item to any item, regardless of its place in any hierarchy, so
>you get a web rather than a tree. By choosing your topic you see all the topics linked to
>it, regardless of where they might be if the items were tree-based.
> >I see this as
>being a graphical version of a web or wiki page - it’s a network. Some people like that
>sort of thing. Others like the tree structure, which is inherently neat and
>understandable. I use tree-based outliners, but hate the way most handle internal
>linking, and wondered whether graphical interfaces would help.
> >By the way, I’ve
>seen the current Personal Brain 4 beta and it seems to me to still be all over the place,
>so I think there’s a way to go yet ....
> >Graham
>