Under the covers

Under the covers

There doesn't appear to be a page on this wiki dedicated to describing the design of the system for potential developers of plugins etc. This page is meant to fill that gap. Please add whatever documentation you would consider to be necessary to turn a professional java developer into a freemind developer. Thanks (and sorry if such information already exists in a collated form elsewhere) --Violetlight 12:41, 4 Aug 2006 (PDT)

The File Format

Let's start with a link to the stated requirements (these could be inlined later on) at File Format Requirements.

Here's the current version of the XML schema from 0.9.0 beta2: [[1]]

freemind.properties and user.properties

These files define the user customisable properties of the freemind application. The freemind.properties defines settings for all users in a multi-user system, and each user should then have a user.properties file, which can override freemind.properties.

TBD - define each of the properties in turn

patterns.xml

This file provides the current implementation of skinning. Patterns defined in this file can be mapped to function keys within freemind, and thence applied to mind maps as a style. Patterns can be simple (make the text in the node italic), or can be complex (make this node large/blue/with-a-1-icon and its immediate child small/yellow/with-a-2-icon).

The Plug-in API

Freemind has a comprehensive plugin API. Plugins are hooked in by an XML file as defined in [[2]].
Various actions can be defined for plugins to hook the behaviour of inbuilt actions. An example is the time management plugin [|XML file].

Plugins can be mandated by a Freemind data file (for example a file saved with TimeManagementPlugin reminders in it):

<map version="0.8.0">
<node CREATED="1154726055515" ID="Freemind_Link_370555638" MODIFIED="1154726201296" TEXT="New Mindmap">
<hook NAME="accessories/plugins/CreationModificationPlugin_new.properties"/>
<node CREATED="1154726156765" ID="_" MODIFIED="1154726213500" POSITION="right" TEXT="h">
<hook NAME="plugins/TimeManagementReminder.xml">
<Parameters REMINDUSERAT="1155244560656"/>
</hook>
</node>
<node CREATED="1154726229406" ID="Freemind_Link_382110888" MODIFIED="1154726269062" POSITION="right" TEXT="hh">
<hook NAME="plugins/TimeManagementReminder.xml">
<Parameters REMINDUSERAT="1155935760656"/>
</hook>
</node>
<node CREATED="1154726231796" ID="Freemind_Link_1550073498" MODIFIED="1154726233031" POSITION="right" TEXT="j"/>
</node>
</map>

TBC.

Discussion on potential design changes

I've left a section here for discussion on changes in the above (rather than use the discussion page).
This may or may not be useful, but discussion leads to innovation... --Violetlight 12:32, 4 Aug 2006 (PDT)

Other sources of design/development information

You should also see the Development page, which describes & discusses the project's development process and some internal details.