The ultimate outliner

Posted by Alexander Deliyannis
Jan 22, 2013 at 01:39 PM

Dr Andus wrote:
>When I was talking about “internal links,” I had Freeplane in mind,
>where you can link from one node to another. This can become useful once
>you have a very big outline and you may end up repeating yourself or
>touching on related topics, in which case linked topics help navigating
>(jumping) from one deep node to another related one at some other
>distant spot in the outline.

Yes, I understand; sorry, I interpreted internal links as wiki-type or URLs. The freeplane approach (actually supported by most modern mind mapping applications) seems reasonable; it follows the same visual concept as the main mind map itself. I am not sure how the links are shown in the outline view though.

>Alexander Deliyannis wrote:
>>I believe that clones are a much more outline-friendly solution to the
>>issue of internal linking

Dr Andus wrote:
>Perhaps the two could be optional alternatives, i.e. one could choose
>between “internal link” or clone, in the manner of BrainStorm’s namesakes(?)

Yes, I agree. In reality they represent alternative approaches to displaying non-consequential relationships; links imply that “this item is related to this”, whereas clones imply that “these two items are really one and the same; change the one and the other will change automatically”. I could live with either approach, but I would find it confusing to have both in the same system.