Plugins

Plugins in 0.8.0

There are several plugins delivered with FreeMind 0.8.0 and 0.8.1, including a reminder plugin, a plugin for export to SVG and PDF and a help plugin. If you use the max version of FreeMind, you have the plugins delivered as part of the distribution, so you do not need to install them manually. The functions that plugins offer are accessible from various menu items.

Plugins delivered with FreeMind 0.8.0:

• Plugin: Time Management
  • Enables adding reminders to nodes. A reminder contains a date and time and is stored with the node it is attached to. FreeMind regularly checks if the date and time is already reached and informs you using blinking icons.
  • Menu items:
    • Tools > Show Calendar
    • Tools > Show Time Scheduler List
  • See also Time Management HowTo.
• Plugin: Export to SVG and PDF
  • Enables export to Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) and export to Portable Document Format (PDF)
  • Menu items:
    • Export > As PDF
    • Export > As SVG
• Plugin: Help
  • Menu items:
    • Help > Help – brings up a help system reminiscent of help usually delivered with Microsoft Windows applications.

Ensuring that plugins are enabled and loaded:

• Only FreeMind "Max" version contains plugins.
• There is a bug in FreeMind v.0.8.0 in that plugins are not loaded if you start FreeMind by clicking on a .mm file that is not in the same folder as FreeMind. The bug should not be there in FreeMind 0.8.1.

Architecture and implementation

Architecture and implementation of plugins: TODO

• accessories/plugins/ - CVS - internal plugins
• plugins - CVS - external plugins

Third-party plugins

There are some three-party plugins, developed by people outside of FreeMind team. A plugin is installed by being placed to FreeMind's plugin folder.

Third-party plugins:

• FreeMind Confluence Plugin - enhances FreeMind with export and import functions to Confluence wiki; see also source code
• clojure-mind - enables evaluation of Clojure expressions directly in FreeMind; Clojure is a dialect of the Lisp programming languages; see also[1]; appears to use FreeMind's plugin technique
• LaTeXMath-Freemind-Plugin - adds some sort of LaTeX capability to FreeMind, other than HotEqn
• WSL creates a complete MediaWiki wiki from the mind map. WSL initializes corporate wikis with a "wiki scaffolding": a wiki installation where some categories, permissions, etc, are initialized to mimic the corporate settings.
• WikiWhirl is a wiki refactoring tool. It extracts a mind map from a wiki, let the users perform changes over the mind map and save back those changes to the wiki.

Writing a plugin

To write a plugin for FreeMind, proceed as follows. TODO.