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XMind
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Posted by Stephen Zeoli
Jan 29, 2008 at 08:50 PM
So I took the plunge and bought XMind. It is on sale at Bits for $99—a savings of $50. This is the first mind mapping/charting program I’ve bought since Inspiration, which I don’t use anymore. Xmind is much more powerful, though it’s outline view is just that, a view and not an editable outline.
I’ve been using Xmind with the most annoying of tasks—the self-performance-evaluation. So for I am impressed, and I’m glad I spent the money… although I figure now that I’ve plunked down my money, it will show up on Give-Away-of-the-Day in the next week or two.
Steve Z.
Posted by Pierre Paul Landry
Jan 29, 2008 at 10:14 PM
Some users are reporting very sluggish operation… is that the case?
(Since it is based on an open data format, I’m considering using Microsoft Sync framework to create live-sync with my pet project SQLNotes. A powerful mindmap presentation would be an excellent compliment to it.)
Posted by Stephen Zeoli
Jan 29, 2008 at 11:01 PM
Pierre Paul Landry wrote:
>Some users are reporting very sluggish operation… is that the case?
I haven’t created any large maps as yet, so I don’t know what might happen then, but so far the performance has been acceptable to me. Xmind is Java-based, so I don’t think it will ever be considered fast. I’ll keep you informed as I use it more.
Steve Z.
Posted by Alexander Deliyannis
Jan 29, 2008 at 11:50 PM
Pierre Paul Landry wrote:
>(Since it is
>based on an open data format, I’m considering using Microsoft Sync framework to
>create live-sync with my pet project SQLNotes. A powerful mindmap presentation
>would be an excellent compliment to it.)
Pierre I’ve been very impressed by your ideas for additional views of the data within SQL Notes (Calendar, Card view, Mindmap, etc). It confirms the expandability of software with a powerful underlying infrastructure. I have still not integrated SQL Notes in my workflow, but it is a serious contender for a variety of tasks.
Re Xmind, I can’t judge the ease of compatibility with SQL Notes, but I would definitely suggest that you either choose MindManager (for reasons of popularity and available add-ons) or FreeMind (as an open source software). Other visual tools you might want to consider linking to are GanttProject, Cmap Tools. I’ve seen XML transformations being used to share data among some of these applications in the past. Here’s a very impressive XML based timeline I came across: http://simile.mit.edu/timeline/
However, the most powerful—and perhaps more easy to implement- way to present data held in SQL Notes is something that I’ve seen no mention of (or perhaps I’ve just missed it, as it seems all too obvious): through PHP/SQL dynamic websites. As far as I know, no CMS (Content Management System) of the hundreds available based on PHP/SQL provides an offline desktop application to edit the content. But what if the SQL Notes’ database file format was directly compatible with such a system? One could simply edit the content in SQL Notes and then FTP the resulting database to the website (or perhaps sync it somehow, so as to download comments posted online).
I don’t know how this fits your vision, but it is the one application I’ve been really eager to use for a long time.
In any case, you be the judge; all the best for the furture of SQL Notes, or whatever you decide to call it ;-)
alx
Posted by Pierre Paul Landry
Jan 30, 2008 at 01:22 AM
One reason I was looking at XMind was that it seems to support many to many relationships (i.e. multiple parents) as does SQLNotes. The other reason is that is supports many different map types. As for MindManager, it seems expensive, doesn’t it ?
Does anyone know if FreeMind supports multiple parents ?
Does FreeMind have as many map types as XMind ?