Requests for enhancements

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There is a section of requests for enhancements already at SourceForge. However, you can still post or edit these here. Always On I would like to minimize to the system tray(for Windows). Or better yet, let's run FreeMind as a transparent window docked to the desktop. Like my brain, I like to always have FreeMind on in the background. Regardless, thanks! Better File Operations, Restore Workspace, New File Extension On Mac OS X at least, the file dialog is buggy - it does not show network drives or my iDisk. Also, it would be useful to have FreeMind re-open the last edited file (and restore the workspace as it was when the user last quit). Still, the most annoying thing is the .mm filename extension - that extension is tied to Obj-C code files in Mac OS X, and probably on other platforms as well. Maybe .mind or .mmp? -- RuiCarmo File Dialog Improvements The file dialogs could use some minor improvements. I would like the dialog boxes for load and save to remember what directory they were in and start from there the next time the dialog is open. Also, if you try to open a file from the "recent files" list but the file no longer exists, there is no warning from freemind. It would be better to have a "file not found" warning, and better still to remove the bad entry from the list when that happens. --fist_187 Images in freemind I really like the way freemind can use images as nodes. However, one of the problems with adding a lot of images to a map is that they are all different sizes. So, I wrote this php script: <?php $tsize = 100; //thumbnail size function noresize($name) { global $argv; $fullpath = $argv[1] . "$name"; echo "<node TEXT=\"&lt;html&gt;"; echo "&lt;img src=&quot;$fullpath&quot;/&gt; \""; echo " FOLDED=\"true\">\n</node>\n"; } function thumbit($name, $w, $h) { global $argv; $fullpath = $argv[1] . "$name"; echo "<node TEXT=\"&lt;html&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;$fullpath&quot;"; echo " width=&quot;$w&quot; height=&quot;$h&quot;\" FOLDED=\"true\">\n"; echo "<node TEXT=\"&lt;html&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;$fullpath&quot;\""; echo " FOLDED=\"true\">\n</node>\n"; echo "<node LINK=\"$fullpath\" TEXT=\"$name\">\n</node>\n"; echo "</node>\n"; } if ($argc < 3) { die("usage: " . $argv[0] . " IMAGEPATH IMAGE1 [[IMAGE2] ... ]\n"); } echo "<map version=\"0.7.1\">\n<node TEXT=\"Ian's image generator\""; echo " FOLDED=\"true\">\n"; for ($i=2; $i<$argc; $i++) { $myimg = $argv[$i]; $props = getimagesize($myimg); $w = $props[0]; $h = $props[1]; if ($w <= $tsize && $h <= $tsize) //too small { noresize($myimg); } else if ($w < $h) //resize height to 100, scale width { $w = intval(($tsize * $w) / $h); $h = $tsize; thumbit($myimg, $w, $h); } else //resize width to 100, scale height { $h = intval(($tsize * $h) / $w); $w = $tsize; thumbit($myimg, $w, $h); } } echo "</node>\n</map>\n"; ?> This is a command line PHP script, so to use it under linux you would type something like: $ php freemindImgGen.php "file:////path/to/prepend/to/images/" image1.jpg [image2.jpg ... ] This will output the text for a new mind map (direct it to a file of your choice) with each image thumbnailed in its own node. The images should all be in the same directory (for some reason, relative paths for images don't seem to work). Each thumbnailed image will have 2 child nodes: one node with the full size image and one node with the filename of the image as a freemind link. Anyway, the reason that I'm posting this here in the request section instead of the user contributions section is that I would like to see this behavior ported into freemind itself. This would be a better behavior for when you drag-and-drop an image file into freemind, as it does just about everything you would want to do with an image in one shot. --fist_187 Node Cloning See node cloning. Clones and copies. I would REALLY like it if FreeMind supported 'shortcuts', 'soft/hard links', or 'virtual folders'. You know what I mean? Just some manner of having one node (and its sub-nodes) be able to exist in 2 different places at once. Change one clone, the other is affected, delete one clone, they all go away. (with options to make it a copy instead of a clone, etc...) You'd make my day if you'd add this functionality! : Alright, but "cloning" is not a good term for this as it implies having a physical copy of something. Less misleading could be "linking", "mirroring", "redirecting", "pointing", "referring"... You are right; cloning is not a proper term. This is the way our users expressed their wishes. --Danielpolansky 09:26, 20 Dec 2004 (PST) Mindmap-Wikis Creating a mixture of Freemind and a Wiki would be very interesting. It would be shown on the web, and editable by everybody, like a Wiki, but it would not be text-only but a FreeMind's mind map instead. That is, provide FreeMind user interface to the underlying wiki technology, handling versioning and other issues. Is there any use of wiki markup in this scenario? Current wiki technology like MediaWiki is already quite attractive in its present state. Either FreeMind interface would be the only one, which would in my view discouradge most of the users, or FreeMind interface would be alternative to a web interface, which would require FreeMind to understand wiki markup. This considered, I hold such a project for too expensive compared to the value it brings. Quite another issue is collaborative mind mapping. This issue is similar to wiki, but here the wiki name does not properly apply as neither wiki markup nor wiki's versioning concept applies. -- Dan of FreeMind Ok, GraphViz is not really mindmapping, but oddmuse-wiki in colaboration with graphviz is really fascinating, take a look (and don't forget to follow the "Edit the text of the Page"-link): http://wiki.doomicile.de/LinuxMuleHistory -- HinnerK I would suggest starting with a simple save-to-WebDAV option, and then following it up with a standardized XML-RPC interface (maybe Atom would be too complex). Having some sort of hooks into node editing operations in the code would be useful, so that people could develop plugins of some sort to perform the actual HTTP transactions live from the applet version -- RuiCarmo Applet allowing editing mind maps. It would be fine to edit a map via applet and save it to a webserver directory. Exporting to Scalable Vector Graphics format (SVG), Flash Viewer Yes! I'd love to see something done with scalable vector graphics, or some such... I really wish Freemind could export to SVG, or maybe even flash... -- Bruce And happily, developers are thinking the same thing: -- Here's Dimitri on that very possibility in forum thread. SVG, however, is still not widely supported - not even in desktop browsers, so it is mostly a way to exchange drawings and print. Exporting to Flash or having a Flash viewer that displayed .mm files (after all, ActionScript can now load XML data easily) would enable quick and effortless integration with current Web browsers without requiring them to install the Sun JVM (which can be a major issue in some environments). Export to LaTeX MindMapping concept is perfect when organizing the structure of a document. I believe that it would be a great feature if freemind could directly export a mindmap as a LaTeX file (using the text of the main node for the title, the text of the main branches for \section and so on). In the mean time (I knowing nothing about java) I wrote this perl script to translate mm->tex. Any improvements are welcome. I will mantain this utility here, but I hope this feature will be included in freemind one day. A perfect bookmark manager? And a useful tool in project preparation too? Date: Fri, 16 Apr 2004 18:10:33 +0200 I use 'Bookmark Manager' (http://sourceforge.net/projects/bkm/) from sourceforge, a very nice project. But I found that importing bookmarks into Freemind is a great option, if there only was a plugin to export them, Freemind would work as a perfect bookmark manager. An option like "export folder structure" would do. Plus, Freemind would work as a nice 'project manager' for creating directory-trees for large projects, at least I see I could find it very usable in my projects which require managing a lot of project files. Creating such structure in Freemind and then exporting it would be very usable. ===Changing attributes by depth level.=== Wouldn't it be good if nodes could have levels (defined as outward from the centre) so that you could change color, font and other node properties by level. For instace, all nodes of level two would have red bubbles. Integrated Google web search How about an accessory software that would input FreeMind's XML and conduct Google and Google News searches on all nodes plus their neighbours? If anything useful is found (and there would be less than x hits), it would *wget* them and add links to the material to the map. Run this as a cronjob and your mind map will always have new ideas when you open FreeMind again. Seems like a suggestion for a plugin. For sure it does not belong to the core FreeMind. Such a plugin will call external tools like wget which increases the installation costs. --Danielpolansky 09:34, 20 Dec 2004 (PST) MIDlet for editing with mobile phones MIDlet idea entry front-end is a MUST! I want to be able to do mind mapping with my mobile phone and then upload the changes to the main map on my desktop. It is not a must. When enabled with importing various other formats, FreeMind can take data from mobile applications. Also, it is not clear why MIDlet should be the technology of choice, if FreeMind shall run on mobile phones. --Danielpolansky 09:33, 20 Dec 2004 (PST) Have floating textbox for titles or comments Hi I would like to request a feature, namely a title and/or comment at the beginning/end of page to be able to use it in presentations, where I would have my name on top right. I would suggest that there is no link to other nodes just a kind of text box. Maybe there are more people thinking about this nice addon? An editable tree view (like the html export) With such view I can imagine freemind to be useable an smaller devices like an ipaq running familiar (or ppc). Can you run freemind on such devices? --Alex Dynamic layout The TouchGraph interface has more potential than the existing fixed one. Mind maps are not supposed to necessarily be hierarchical, but organically growing and intertwined a lot. In FreeMind I can add links, but they aren't really good if compared with something universal like TouchGraph (GoogleBrowser, WikiBrowser). I think FreeMind would become much more powerful (not to mention cool looking) if it had a dynamic mode without a root node. It would be great if arbitrary links (not just parent/child) between any nodes were supported, if text size and colors would dynamically adjust according to the distance, relevance and other factors, and if the layout would be dynamic, with the graph rearranging itself on the fly. More details at the TouchGraph site ([1]), and at this page: [2]). I disagree with the views presented here. A good news for you is that if you don't like the way FreeMind presents data, you can choose TouchGraph instead. --Danielpolansky 09:32, 20 Dec 2004 (PST) Easier to delete nodes A relatively straightforward enhancement: the Node/Remove Node on the popup menu could be moved to the main popup menu, under 'Insert Child Node'. It would probably be better server by being called 'Delete Child Node'. I think it would also be fantastic if it had a shortcut key - Del probably being the most suitable. I find it a right pain to delete nodes (I notice someone submitted an RFE on sourceforge asking for a delete function, clearly not being aware there already was one - I think this indicates it needs moving!) David Perez comment: An alternative I use is to cut the node in order to delete it. Nodes will be easy to delete in the next version. The reason why they are not easy to delete currently is that there's no undo available. In the mean time, pressing Ctrl + X should suffice to delete a node. --Danielpolansky 09:28, 20 Dec 2004 (PST) Statistics Show number of nodes in a map, number of leafs (childless nodes), and number of nodes with children. Thousands of new icons Enhancing numers and variety of icons to the sufficient amout would definetely increase versatility of FreeMind. Plenty of small pictures it is a must if you want to organize your knowledge (e.g. notes from collage), so that every 'key info' could be easily remebered. The more icons that help associating the information the better - I would like to see pictures of man, men, woman, women, tree, chair, table and so on - any thing you can imagine, categorized. I know I can use extrenal pictures, but it's really inconvenient if I have to look for each picture on the Internet for a few minutes while creating a new map. Built-in icons would be a great help.