Latest revision as of 11:13, 25 February 2011

What follows are not fully consolidated posts, written mostly by FreeMind users.

PDA

Up to 18. 2. 2004 nobody in the forum seems to have FreeMind running on a PDA. It should be possible because there are Java-VMs for the Palm and Pocket PC platform (e. g. SuperWaba) and there is JRE for Linux-based PDAs. If you succeed, please write about it here.

A FreeMindPDA SuperWaba version is under development by Vik Olliver, which is incomplete but Open Sourced, so feel free to improve on it.
Workaround: FreeMind Data on PalmOS: use an xsl sheet to transform to ShadowPlan format (see http://www.codejedi.com ) then sync the ShadowPlan file generated to PalmOS device. You can even edit on the PalmOS device and then transform back to FreeMind on the desktop. (Taken from a tip by David Keltie on the freemind-users mailing list)
Yet another workaround can be found in this thread .
And another: I am using Emacs my Pocket PC (yes, really works fine!) and Import and export to Emacs and Wikipedia-outlines
Pocket Freemind runs on Pocket PC/Windows Mobile devices, and supports the Freemind file format natively. Requires the .NET Compact Framework version 2.0

I created XSLT files to translate to/from ShadowPlan Desktop XML format. You can get them from the ShadowPlan Yahoo! Group. Jules ( http://www.knightnet.org.uk )

A new application "FreeYourMind" for an PDA outliner that runs on a Windows-PDA and uses the FreeMind data format can be found unter [1].

Dynamically generated mind maps with PHP

Dynamically generated mind maps visualized by Freemind Flashbrowser. Here is an example, which generates nodes and shows them as a Flash application: http://www.goermezer.de/dynamic-freemind/ Could this be a way to a mind map driven CMS ? Here is the Playground of Mustafa: [2]

FreeMind combined with wiki

Disclaimer: What follows are suggestions of FreeMind users, not of the FreeMind development team. There is no combination of FreeMind and wiki under development, nor do we endorse the idea in any way. --Danielpolansky 13:15, 26 Sep 2004 (PDT)

Does that mean that you are against the idea of a freemind-wiki hybrid or just that you personally aren't interested in working towards that goal? --anonymous

Frankly, I do not think that a hybrid between FreeMind and wiki is a good idea. But I may be in error. Anyway, as FreeMind is free software, anyone can develop whatever hybrid he considers worth it. --Danielpolansky 11:10, 28 Jan 2005 (PST)

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 ugly text-only but a beautiful mindmap instead!

Maybe a fusion of of mind maps and wikis reform the whole wiki-scene and eventually the internet. Rendering Wikis with Freemind would make them so much more attractive to users. --Helge

Agreed.

Helge and others interested in freemind/wiki should consider http://www.wikimindmap.org/ - it shows wikipedia using a mindmap format. There are hover-over text snippets, links, and other functionality from mindmap, but the content is driven by wikipedia. It also has the ability to export as a .mm file and is opensource. (I have no affiliation with this product, but I do prefer to view Wikipedia in this format). -bivaterl

Moving through XML data, finding and modifying links will enable the link between wikis, search engines and mind mapping

Existing Applications Similar to the Idea of FreeMind Wiki

WikiMindMap WikiMindMap is a simple mindmap developed with the FreeMind Flash Viewer to navigate through Wikipedia
The TWiki Draw Plugin doesn't give you mind maps, but you can draw similar things in it.
TouchGraph Wiki Browser comes already quite close to a FreeMindWiki. The maps of well-known wikis look pretty confusing, because mind maps have usually less links than wikis on a page. To see for yourself, download it from direct download of version (26 Feb 2004). More related links follow.
- Wiki about TouchGraph Wiki Browser
- Touchgraph's project page
- JGraph don't know how similar they are overall, but they do overlap in some areas. JGraph has broader scope.
- MindRaider MindRaider is Semantic Web outliner that is graphical and works with Wiki

In general: Combination of wikis and mind maps

Now I found the place where a combination of wikis and mind maps should be and is being discussed. In "the mother of all wikis":

Here is an explanation: WikiMindMap @ c2.com
Here you will find an example of a visual map of a wiki which is generated by a script. Please copy the link into your browser and take the space out by hand. We do not want to real link in here because then too many bots would visit it and that would be too much traffic for the script which generates the maps. Copy this to your browser and take the "WRONG" out: "http:WRONG//c2.com/cgi/tour?FrontPage"
Here you will find even more ways to visualize wikis: VisualizeTheWiki @ c2.com

          [Couldn't get these to load - Mar '05 - dilgreen]

The issue here would seem to be the structure of the linkages. Mind maps are hierarchical - "Tree structures" - Wikis are fundamentally different in structure, allowing all sorts of linkages - "sem-lattice structures" - as used by Christoper Alexander as the underpinning of A Pattern Language. The non-hierarchical aspect of the data structure he insists is necessary to usefully map real systems seems not to get enough attention - I guess because in the software world, hierarchical structures are useful in forcing structure onto free-roaming thoughts, and because data processing IS fundamentally a hierarchical process. The wonderful thing about the WWW and more specifically, Wikis, is that they not only allow hon hierarchical data stuctures, but also keep them manageable, by tracing linkages.

However, in an application which truly supports 'mind mapping', an open data structure is absolutely necessary - read Chris. Alexander's short article A City is not a Tree, for a useful discussion of this in realtion to cities. The mind is infinitely more flexible and various than a city - that is the source of its power. A mind map which only supports hierarchical relationships is more of a mind-trap! - dilgreen

Wikiing with FreeMind

The first step could be to add a save format to Freemind which is Wiki-style, in any case more human readable than the current XML-format. Then you could edit Wiki-pages in this format in Freemind. This should be quite easy.

Something similar is there now: There is an export/import to Emacs' outline format. This is compatible to Wikipedia-style outlines. See here: Import and export to Emacs and Wikipedia-outlines

Another Idea which is available for e.g. Trac is the graphviz plugin (using dot format) to produce graphs. Simple XSL for exporting can be found in the Dot Export on the Freemind patch list.

Maybe something can be programmed along the lines of the TWikiDrawPlugin --Helge

We need a version of Freemind which can show the changes between two Freemind files in nice way.

You can easily compare freemind files with [Totalcommander] Save the mindmap in freeminds regular file format select both .mm files and do a 'compare by content'. Henk Daalder

Wiki Alike Mind Mapping Web App

There is already a Web based Mind Mapping application now, that is Web Of Web (WoW - http://www.webofweb.net)

To be useful in open web environments, WoW has some wiki thoughts at design, however, the current release only stores every version of a node ever made. The tree history is not available yet, and you have to restore to a previous version by copy and paste as a new version.

Mind Maps of WoW can be embed into an HTML page as a Java Applet, and allow users to login and perform modifications inplace there.

The public demo site is The Official WoW Site

Source code package containing a pre-built wow.war for quick deployment is available from http://wow.dev.java.net you can run your own Mind Mapping Site simply with a Tomcat (http://tomcat.apache.org) or any J2EE compliant servlet container.

Japanese FreeMindWiki

Hi, My friend Akiyah have developed MindMapBBS, aim to create web-based MindMapping without rich UI browser. He is planning connecting with wiki from MindMapBBS. MindMapBBS is Zope Product(DTML Based), can be used as inlined object in DTML Document/Method. He called Small Product. --Takeshi

Small Product (Now, supported japanese only).

Thanks for that hint! Nearly nothing on the page yet, but sounds very interesting. We should keep checking that site for updates. --anonymous

Japanese Translation for FreeMind 0.9.0 (Now, supported japanese only).

Implementation of FreeMind in a Wiki Engine

The following wiki engines support FreeMind.

MediaWiki can be extended to support embedded FreeMind maps in both flash or applet plugins.

WikkaWiki. It allows to include FreeMind maps. See an inline example. And it seems like you can integrate WikkaWiki into blogging software.

JSPWiki. It supports the display of FreeMind maps using a plugin.

Tikiwiki. A MindMap WikiPlugin mod for Tikiwiki is now available in TikiwikiCVS. It supports the browsing of FreeMind maps using both the FreeMind Flash and Java browsers. The plugin can display external FreeMind maps using absolute or relative URL's; FreeMind maps can also be uploaded as wiki attachments and displayed using the flash plugin.

FreeMind combined with Blogging

Blogger

I made a template to use FreeMind with Blogger. I haven't exactly used it yet, but I'm pretty sure it should work. The blog needs to be published as a ".mm" file, and the index file needs to be html containing FreeMind's applet. -- Phil

Misc

Icons

An icon to associate with Freemind documents (.mm) in MS Windows (.ico) is available for download below. It supports 256 as well as true color regimes.

http://www.menyhart.net/blog/software/freemind-icon/

New icons added! New (crystal) icons (128x128px) for KDE, gnome, etc. window environments (they are based from the soffice icon of mediawiki wiki/Category:Insect_icons and the Crystal SVG empty.png Mimetype Icon).

There are two types of icons, application and mime-type:

Error creating thumbnail: Unable to save thumbnail to destination

Hope the community likes them, --Talassio 03:57, 13 Feb 2009 (UTC)

Mind Trail / Web ?

Today a friend of mine showed me the website [3] and I was reminded of this project, which I have used before in organizing my writing. Could FreeMind be expanded to include another mode where people could browse through different topics like a web, instead of in a heirarchial order like a tree? Maybe something to consider for version 2.0?

Tips and Tricks

1. When I made a bulleted list, it appeared nicely in freemind, but no bullets were visible in tthe exported HTML-file. To solve this, I use the <li> tag as follows:

Instead of disc, you can use square or circle as well.

2. As default, at least on windows, node selection method is set to direct. This can cause problems whan you want to use the toolbar as when you pass over a different node this becomes selected. You can work around this by selecting the node then holing the ctrl key while you move to the toolbar. Alternatively you can change the selection method in Tools -> Preferences -> Behaviour, then set Selection Method to 'By Click'

If the preferences-dialog does not work, add the line
selection_method = selection_method_by_click
to the file user.properties

(Another possibility is to use the "Delayed" option, also under Selection Method. I set the delay time to 100 for one tenth of a second on my system.)

3. XSL/XML-Editor for editing XSLT-stylesheets
If you want to modify or create a new xslt-stylesheet to export freemind maps, you can use the freeware tool Cooktop:
http://xmlcooktop.com/
With this tool you can test easily, how your stylesheet transforms the freemind map. You can open a freemind map by renaming it to .xml, e. g. test.mm to test.xml.

MindMap Art

I thought it might be fun to design a logo for FreeMind using FreeMind itself, not realizing that the logo effort had been concluded. I put together the image below.

Error creating thumbnail: Unable to save thumbnail to destination

Freemind on Mac OS/X

Freemind works on OS/X 10.4 and 10.5 without problem. Just unpack the tarball into /opt/freemind and run /opt/freemind/freemind.sh.

Platypus can be used to create a Freemind Application bundle. These instructions assume that Freemind has been unpacked into /opt/freemind

Create a script /tmp/FreeMind.sh that contains

   #! /bin/sh
   /opt/freemind/freemind.sh

Open a terminal window and type

    cd /tmp ; unzip /opt/freemind/lib/freemind.jar

Open up the Platypus GUI
Enter the App Name as FreeMind
Enter /tmp/Freemind.sh as the script name
Select None for output
Right Click (Ctrl Click) on the Icon and Select icns file, then browse to the file /tmp/images/FreeMindWindowIcon.icns
Select create and place the bundle in the applications folder. Note that this will move the /tmp/FreeMind.sh so you may care to copy it first

Here is a tip on how to fix the Add Child Node keyboard shortcut

FreeMind and presentations

I was fascinated by the capabilities of FreeMind and MindMaps. But I was wondering if it might be possible to use it for a presentation.

When giving a speech to a wider audience you can't just sit on your notebook an flick around with the mouse.

What I wanted was to be able to stand freely, move around and talk to the audience. When the next topic of my speech would come I just wanted to press one button on my Apple Remote an the MindMap should move on dynamicaly, extend the next branch and so forth.

What I did was the following. It worked out quite well for me. For the price of simplicity you lose a bit of flexibility...

All in all it's a pretty straight forward and hassle free way to create a presentation:

I created a MindMap as usual
planned my speech (where to start, which topic will be next etc.)
then I got a screencast utility (i.e. iShowU on the mac)
selected a fixed area: the white space with the MindMap in FreeMind
chose a high-res video format
pressed the record button and switched to my FreeMind window
there I moved slowly from one branch to the other, extended, collapsed...just allong the speech that I planned.
then I stopped the recording and the result is a movie file.
for my speech I opened up that movie file in quicktime (fullscreen mode)
while speeking I just pressed play/pause on my apple remote to move along my MindMap while speeking.

Result:

the result was a fullscreen presentation, an automagicaly moving an changing MindMap
the audience was stunned and it was easy for them to follow the "logic" of the MindMap
for me as the speaker it was completely hassle free and I just had to press on button on my remote

What are your thoughts - any other ideas/ suggestions?

IMO you should try mm2s5 - Pradeep Jindal

Stuff: Difference between revisions