Barry, Yes, arrows can be of different types. Colors are now supported in the UI. Styles (dotted, etc.) are supported in the backend, only awaiting an afternoon to put in the UI to select the style you want.
Weighting of arrows is also supported, currently being saved in the shared database, similarly just needs a selection form in the UI. A heavier weight on the arrow between nodes causes those two nodes to be laid out closer together, indicating relevance to each other. Size of nodes is currently selectable, I'm sure you saw that. If by attribute of an arrow you mean labeling of it, that can currently be done by clicking the asterisk next to the arrow. Branches are minimized by clicking the minus sign (tiny) at the head of the arrow. Nodes may be clustered by dragging to the upper right to the tiny icon that's there, just below "Summaries". So there's some support for arranging similar topics together. Yes, I'm a big fan of crowd sourcing, in fact, that's the motivation behind this. If you haven't installed the button on your browser to insert links to websites in a graph on the run as you browse, that's worth doing (Tools menu). Printing is practical up to a certain size, but .pdf export (Tools menu again) is better, because it retains the active links. Also, embedding a clickable graph in a FRIAM website is possible, though that's public to the world. Ron -- Ron Newman MyIdeatree.com <http://www.ideatree.us/> On Mon, Jan 21, 2013 at 3:17 PM, Barry MacKichan < barry.mackic...@mackichan.com> wrote: > Interesting... > > Here are some ideas to think about or shoot down. > > Is there a role for different types of arrows between entities? I can > imagine writing something and wanting to indicate that it is in response to > (a particular paragraph?) of a particular email, but I might also want to > point back to the beginning (message or paragraph(s)) of this particular > thread, which may be embedded in a larger thread, as in the case of an idea > originating in a response to another message. I might also want to refer to > background material. I might want to assign importance or weight to arrows, > as in 'I am responding to this message, but it also has some relevance for > this other message.' The most general case is that of assigning an > attribute to an arrow, but you'd have to be careful about making it too > complex. > > Some sort of 'force-collapsible' display (e.g., > http://mbostock.github.com/d3/talk/20111116/force-collapsible.html or the > WordFlex iPad app) would make browsing interesting. > > The Mac app DevonThink has 'see-also' and 'classify' operations that > attempt to find similarities between text bits that seem to be based on > vocabulary similarities (they claim it is 'AI-based'). That would be a > possible direction eventually. This similarities could provide additional > weighted arrows between nodes. They have some server-based products, but I > am not familiar with them. > > If you're a fan of crowd-sourcing, people could add weighted arrows to > make explicit connections that they find. Nodes could gather weight or > importance based on 'reviews' consisting of an integer. > > Most of these suggestions make printing a result impractical, but perhaps > online interaction would be enough. You could choose which part of the > graph to look at by clicking on a node to see its neighborhood. Sizes of > nodes could reflect their weight. You could select what subset of arrows > you want to see. > > --Barry > > PS. > All the data of an email (except attachments) are transmitted together. To > see all of it together in a file, save the message as a file. (On a Mac > using Apple Mail, select a message, choose File/Save As..., and you'll get > the file. Mail programs parse this to separate the content and header > information for you. > > > On Jan 21, 2013, at 11:07 AM, Ron Newman wrote: > > I'm willing to donate a FRIAM license of > MyIdeaTree<http://www.myideatree.com/> > (drag and drop building of network graphs from links). I'd learn a ton > about usability from that. The email / blog content would have to be > located on the web somewhere. > > Ron > > > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com >
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