On Fri, 2006-01-20 at 09:25 -0800, Mimi Yin wrote: > One important difference between Chandler and most mind-mapping tools > is that Chandler is a collection point for all kinds of information > you didn't create by hand (mailing lists, feeds, shared information). > As a result, the bar for presenting data in a way that is > comprehensible is much higher because more often than not, users will > be interacting with information they've had no prior contact with.
In one respect, yes. However, looked at another way, it is precisely that novelty that lends itself to having a mindmap like facility available - one of the the things I would have dealt with a good comment on a draft, or a perspicacious point that wouldn't have occurred to me, would have been to drag it over onto a branch, make a branch, and/or link it with another branch. I see MMing as a facility, perhaps an interface option. My wife/partner/significant other (delete as ideologically preferred) simply doesn't get on with mindmapping beyond the shallowest layer - she is a classical logically progressive and linear thinker, once upon a time a good arithmetist and mathematician. I'm, despite having been a scientist and technologist most of my working life, not a logical thinker in that respect - I work with leaps of connections and intuition - tho' clearly logical processes operate somewhere in my gray matter - and find structuring things difficult. Structuring until the point of presentational preparation gets in the way, in fact. I've just had a telephone conversation for nearly an hour with someone from a nature conservation organisation as I have volunteered my services to set up a couple of projects. A lot of points came up (it became clear I was considerably more experienced in terms of community development methods over some 35 years compared to the chap who was ringing from the organisation) of things I was making connections with and projects I was aware of with potential connections or of potential mutual area interests. I would have loved to have had a diary/planner/notetaker/mindmapper available to dump that down to this evening now the other 'alf has got back and is reading bedtime story to Alexander (meanwhile sprogget Mk1 is muttering rude words next to me on the other computer in the study playing some BBC website game - Excuse me a moment - Oi! Language!!) Sorry as I was saying... I think that this sort of facility could be a "killer" No idea of technically how hard it would be do it - nick the code from Freemind for example and graft it in as a facility or as a complete interface style. No reason why one cannot have lots of style - Outlook style for the weaners, Mindmap with calender links, data front end etc. for the more adventurous. But I've yet to see a PIM that meets my requirments, and mapping seems closest if it can be easily switched to a "diary page". For example, whilst mapping out a project line, I put in a date, an autmatic prompt would come up warning of a diary clash. Example, mapping out a disconnected thought that has linked to another element of something, putting in a contact name or reference paper, an auto link is made to bring to my attention that name has been mentioned before with another project, suggesting a mutuality link between organisations, e.g. or a paper has been cited by someone else in a thus far disconnected map, perhaps in a different obvert file. _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ Open Source Applications Foundation "Design" mailing list http://lists.osafoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/design
