Requests for enhancements

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We prefer that you send your requests for enhancements here. Please look first if a similar request for enhancement already exists, using Ctrl + F. Also, there is a section of requests for enhancements at FreeMind's project page at SourceForge.


Export and Import

Corresponding requests for enhancement.

Export to Scalable Vector Graphics format (SVG)

Available in FreeMind 0.8.0 RC2. 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.

Export to Flash or teach Flash to view mm

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

Feb 10,2005. 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 (and since I know 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.

Export and import to Ganttproject

Requests for enhancements:

The above link contains an XSLT sheet that may do the trick for you after some adjustment.

Export to favorites or bookmarks

Requests for enhancements:

Export to ontology formats (OWL, DAML)

Requests for enhancements:

Export and import to OPML

Requests for enhancements:

See also OPML. OPML - Outline Processor Markup Language.

Searching

Requests for enhancements:

Further searching requests.

  • regular expression search
  • incremental search. No popup; with every letter typed, a node containing the string typed so far is found. Can be modelled on Emacs.

Misc

Attach note to a node

Requests for enhancements:

Many people want to have a note attached to a node. Some mind mapping programs have this feature. In my view, such a feature creates a basis for splitting of uses. I would expect long nodes to contain paragraphs or even small articles; I have such nodes, both plain and HTML. I also have long nodes containing nicely set HTML tables. An XSLT transforming script can either assume that paragraphs are in the long nodes or that they are in the notes; not both. Different uses would then require different XSLT scripts. Searching would need to be extended to also search through notes. Notes of different nodes, unlike nodes themselves, cannot be made visible on the canvas at the same time. Without note, every piece of the text in the mind map is a node and therefore first class citizen; it is allowed for it to have children, and whatever feature is offered to other nodes (like icons, time reminders, changing of the default color and the like) is offered to it as well.

Screenshots showing how long nodes can be used follow.

Error creating thumbnail: Unable to save thumbnail to destination
Error creating thumbnail: Unable to save thumbnail to destination
Error creating thumbnail: Unable to save thumbnail to destination

As this is such a requested feature, I'd like to invite you to discuss pros and cons here. --Danielpolansky 11:47, 15 Feb 2005 (PST)

The main reasons for enabling node text are as follows: a). to speed the process of map construction & brainstorming. many times note text can be added "after" the primary brainstorming of a topic is complete, as the dimension of information is different - usually it is more detailed. b). the second reason is just or even more important, and that is, to enhance "readability" of the map itself. At our company, we teach that a good mindmap should not contain full sentences, but instead, it should have short phrases - even just one or two words. That is, studies have found out people can understand the main point of any topic by "seeing" just a few words. Maps should be "seen" and not "read". Then, when more detail is needed, you just open the specific node, or view it by a mouse-over type operation. So to summarize, SPEED and READABILITY are critical to the maps actual development and use for most people. --GregArndt 14:15, 15 Feb 2005 (CST-US)
I don't get the point of a). Current solution does not prevent anynode from adding long nodes after the first brainstorming phase. In fact, without separate note, you can always add something afterwards as there is no limit to the depth. What concerns b), long nodes can be folded. This prevents map from being cluttered.
Admittedly, mouse over operation is not sufficient to show the long nodes folded behind a short one. Having a quick look at many long nodes, one at the time, is currently not that easy; it requires a lot of single clicks. --Danielpolansky 12:42, 19 Feb 2005 (PST)
Ok, here's my go ahead. So many people want this feature, and so many mind mapping programs have it. As I am not a mind mapper but rather knowledge manager, I can't judge on this issue properly. Let's get surprised. --Danielpolansky 12:48, 19 Feb 2005 (PST)
Great news. This will be a real positive addition. And for users that like long notes on the map, they can still always do that. Thank you in advance, this is an excellent application that will continue to improve. ==GregArndt 23:12,, 19 Feb 2005 (USA-CST)

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 or Mirroring

Requests for enhancements:

One feature request that has attracted a lot of attention from users is what they call node cloning or mirorring. This amounts to enabling a node to have more than one fathers. That is, such a node appears visually at more places of a map, still, has only one structure and data. Linking a node graphically to more parts of a map is already possible, but users proposing cloning would like to see more visually integrated approach.

Users get encouraged by the fact that the hierarchical application LEO already has such a feature.

This feature has been discussed at forums under threads [http://sourceforge.net/forum/forum.php?thread_id=1022954&forum_id=22101 Cloning of nodes] and "node cloning/mirroring".

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! --anonymous
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"... --anonymous
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 discourage 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. --Danielpolansky 13:24, 18 Feb 2005 (PST)

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 don't get your point. What is the relevance to the topic discussed here? --Danielpolansky 13:28, 18 Feb 2005 (PST)

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.

Requests for enhancements:

It would be fine to edit a map via applet and save it to a webserver directory.

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 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.

OR Allow user to define default level attributes to be applied when a branch is made. The most common one being font size and edge width. Undefined attributes like colour should flow down. This is just the desired default at creation time and may be changed. Branches further out than the deepest defined default all inherit from previous branch.

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?

Request for enhancements:

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

ToughGraph like dynamic layout

Requests for enhancements:


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)
  • Well, in my opinion the links between nodes certainly offer a starting point for improvements. They are more curved than really necessary. --TMaschler 01:46, 17 Feb 2005 (PST)
  • Further, the idea of formatting nodes in function of their distance from the start node (i.e. by style sheets) would greatly enhance the mind map appearance; although it should be possible to overwrite the node formatting style for each node individually. --TMaschler 01:46, 17 Feb 2005 (PST)
  • What about offering a variety of display modes for the nodes (tree view, the current default view, without hierarchy, ...)?

More flexible Resize Options

What about the following resize possibilities: --TMaschler 01:46, 17 Feb 2005 (PST)

  • automatically/ dynamically
  • by clicking on magnification glass icons (+ and -)

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)

Torsten Gräßler comment:

Find the line starting with "#keystroke_remove" in the <user home>/freemind/user.properties file and change it to "keystroke_remove = DELETE". Now you can delete a node with the DEL key. This works on my WinXP Pro, but should work on other platforms, too. -- 04:27, 23 Mar 2004

Statistics

Requests for features:

Show the statistics

  • number of nodes in a map
  • number of leafs (childless nodes)
  • number of nodes with children

on the node level or a map level (once you can do node level, you also can do map level).

Thousands of new icons

Enhancing the number 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.

It is clear that a larger icon library would be helpful. --Danielpolansky 13:18, 18 Feb 2005 (PST)

it would be great if i would able to add or delet icons in to the toolbar my self. 22.2.05 by erwin

Zooming With Scroll Button

Being able to pan by holding down the right-hand mouse button and twiddling the scroll wheel is great. What would help navigation a little more would be to zoom in and out by holding down, say, the left-hand mouse button.

New menu entry Save All

Requests for enhancements:

User defined icons

Requests for enhancements

Keep custom/unknown XML tags when saving

Requests for enhancements:

Collaborative editing of mind maps

Requests for enhancements:

Conference-like editing of a shared map. When one user adds a node, other users get display update, and vice versa. Rather demanding request, but also potencially highly useful.

Allow for mathematical formulas using LaTeX or MathML

Requests for enhancements:

People want to type in mathematical formulas in text markup and see something good looking when not edited.

User attributes or tags of a node

Requests for enhancements:

For user editable using a popping up table. File format example:

<node TEXT="Tagged">
  <tag NAME="cost" VALUE="500€"/>
  <tag NAME="todo" VALUE="yes"/>
</node>

Rich text formatting of nodes

Requests for enhancements:

Rich text formatting includes boldface, italics, font colors, tables and the like. It is already possible using HTML in nodes. What's missing is the GUI support for editing HTML nodes. Another thing missing is pasting of RTF - Rich Text Format directly into FreeMind.

Enable spell checking

Requests for enhancements:

Add label to edges

Requests for enhancements:

As I see it, this will make the map difficult to read. I can't imagine how to implement this in a visually acceptable manner. --Danielpolansky 14:02, 5 Mar 2005 (PST)

Add label to arrow link

Filter nodes by their icons

Requests for enhancements

Set filter on a given node, as a list of icon names. When such a filter is set, only those descendands of the filtered node are shown that satisify the filter. A node satisfies the filter, if one of its icons is in the filter's set of icons, or one of its descendants satisfies the filter.

Filtering based on icons is not very neat, as it does not decouple the meaning from its presentation. But it may be a good interim solution anyway. --Danielpolansky 11:02, 20 Feb 2005 (PST)

Insert Current Date and Hour

Feb 25,2005. It would be nice to have a button to insert in a node the current date and/or hour. Thanks!

Makes sense. Can be found in Window's Notepad under the key F5. --Danielpolansky 10:06, 26 Feb 2005 (PST)

Support for callto: protocol

As pointed out in a forum posting, support for callto: protocol would be helpful.

.