I came across this site and it's beautifully done. Their app gallery covers everything from notetaking to mindmaps to brainstorming to painting.

https://infinitecanvas.tools/

Great site. I did notice that they didn't include Noteey, which is really coming along.

There's several lifetimes of CRIMPing potential there. Better clear the calendar and get started.

Cyganet wrote:

I came across this site and it's beautifully done. Their app gallery
covers everything from notetaking to mindmaps to brainstorming to
painting.

https://infinitecanvas.tools/

Sigh. They always forget Curio. George works hard, if he's not the most responsive developer on the Internet he's tied for it, and Curio has such a long history.

Oh, you are right. Really Curio is one of the original canvas-type apps.

Amontillado wrote:

Sigh. They always forget Curio. George works hard, if he's not the most
responsive developer on the Internet he's tied for it, and Curio has
such a long history.

They’ve also forgotten Apple Numbers and Growly Notes.

They have a process for adding new tools via their GitHub page, if anyone wants to add their favourites.

Great list. Meanwhile, the niche that interests me is tools that both have an infinite, flexible canvas (not just strict mind-mapping) and also have an outline view of the items on the canvas. Very few tools seem to do this, but a few options that come close are:


- CmapTools (but limited drawing)
- Compendium (outdated, limited drawing)
- Fibery (comes closest, but hierarchy representation is confusing on whiteboards)
- Infoqube (but limited in terms of shapes and drawing)

Of course there are fundamental constraints to translating freefom canvas elements into a tree view (and it's not always clear how hierarchy should be mapped), but I'm hopeful that eventually more tools will incorporate something along these lines. Fibery seems be the closest right now.

Lucas wrote:

Great list. Meanwhile, the niche that interests me is tools that both
have an infinite, flexible canvas (not just strict mind-mapping) and
also have an outline view of the items on the canvas.

Lattics mindmap can do this.

The mindmap shows a mindmap/outline of the articles.
But you can add as many notes as you want, either by writing them in or by putting existing notes on the board. You can move them around as you wish, put in arrows (and add text to them or change their colour). Or link them. Notes with existing links show the linking lines.

Rather than do this, you can also open a mindmap of any tag. Will initially show all the articles and notes at the top, but you can move them around, edit them as you wish or add new ones. The new ones will be automatically tagged. This view has no mindmap/outline.

No drawing or shape variation in Lattics though, just variations in how much of a view shows.
The pure whiteboard is still being developed.

Tinderbox has multiple views for the same data -- outline, map, hyperbolic, etc.

Paul Korm wrote:

Tinderbox has multiple views for the same data -- outline, map,
hyperbolic, etc.

I love Tinderbox, which is in a class of its own, but links in map view cannot be viewed as hierarchy in outline view, and hierarchy in outline view is not very visible within a given map view, although of course you can drill down.

(I forgot to mention that YouMinds Composer is probably the most robust in terms of multiple views include canvas-type views and outline views. Not my favorite UI, but it still works.)

There’s a nice plugin for Obsidian which turns a “canvas” into an outline: Canvas2Document. It turns a complete canvas of linked notes into a single long-form document integrating all cards, notes, images and other content. It’s a really clever piece of programming. However, it’s not quite the same as what you’re talking about.

On the Mac, there are various mindmapping tools that do what you describe, one of the best-known being MindNode (you can view the outline alongside the mindmap). SimpleMind does, too (and so does Xmind, I believe, which is multi-platform). They can all be used as infinite canvases (as can the little-known but rather impressive Tidy Mind, which doesn’t do outlines).

Cheers,
Bill

Lucas wrote:

Great list. Meanwhile, the niche that interests me is tools that both
have an infinite, flexible canvas (not just strict mind-mapping) and
also have an outline view of the items on the canvas.

Another tool that does this is miMind, which has a freeform layout option and an outline of items even when they are in freeform layout. The outline is searchable. It is also exportable, and the export includes the node contents and notes

https://mimind.cryptobees.com/index.html