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Old 11-26-2012, 04:40 PM
schferk schferk is online now
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I - Visio

I fear I mixed up my real experience with retroactive wishful thinking. In fact, within the organigramme template only, there is a rectangle stencil / symbol that can indeed be cloned, but I think now that's only possible within the same drawing. Anyway, both ways for the technical implementation of multi-map symbol cloning are valid and could be realized by whomever willing to do it.

II - Another advantage of mm

In an IMS like UR, you'd have multiple items, each with a (rather short) title and then real content OR rather short details, explanations, etc. So, in analysis / projecting / planning / etc., you'd have lots of items, with their titles BEING displayed, and with lots of minor details, perhaps some words, perhaps 3 lines within the content / editor pane, and which would NOT be visible.

Now here comes, perhaps, the idea to get a 1-pane outliner, in order to have these short details visible, which in UR and such are invisible. That's perfectly possible, of course, but remember, a 1-pane outliner will not solve your problem of too-much-compactness of your "musing data".

Hence the interest of a mm prog: Here, you'd have a central topic (level 0 - bear this in mind, please, and if you consider the source item being level 1, add 1 to any number that follows), the name of the map in question, then, around this, some specific topics (level 1), and then, each of these have their respective sub-tree, with the specific subjects / ideas / etc. (level 2), and then, further down, they often have some details (level 3).

If you don't do lots of single maps, but only one very-big-map or just several rather-big-maps, you could be here at level 4 or level 5, instead of level 3, and that's as well as the system I detail here, given the fact that most mm progs (= don't buy any other / any crippled, "Personal" = not-"Business" version that can't do it) allow for switching from "big picture" to "display this branch only", and back again. Anyway, let's consider the level 3 as the "put descriptive details here" level and go back to our example.

In the following, then, you might look after levels 6 and 7, when I mention levels 2 and 3, no problem. The important is, I want to speak of those 2 levels where (in my case) 2 in UR would be single items titles, and the next level (in my case 3) would be the content of that same item.

So, again, we have level 1 containing what in UR would be headings (= not individual item titles, but the titles of "items" that in fact are parents to a group / subgroup".

And we have level 2, the UR item title. Now for level 3, i.e. the content of that same item.

It goes without saying that whenever you've got real detail here, a mm is NOT the right place to put that in, and you should perhaps put it into the NOTE field of that mm item, but perhaps not, since those note fields they are often bad, often worse, from their capabilities, and especially since they would constitue a FORTH separate entity for your things: You'll have the file system, the mm maps, UR or another IMS, so things in a forth body would not be a good idea imo, in most cases (there might be special cases where all SPECIFIC data go into a mm map system, and the notes there, and nothing else contained elsewhere - that would seem to be ok with me).

So, if there is real content, preferably do a link (from the mm item on level 2) to a UR item, or anything along those lines; anyway, such "real content" backgrounds of planning items should rather be the exception: In most cases, you'll get nothing, just two words, or perhaps even 2 or 3 lines of text.

Now, what to do with that "mini content"? Very simply, it'll become your mm level 3, and if it's too long for being visually ok within one level 3 item "under" the corresponding level 2 item, just split it up into 2 or 3 or 4 different such level 3 siblings - this cutting up will also force you to bring a max. of order / neatness into these bits. In exceptional cases, you could also split this level 3 then further up into level 4 bits, but my thinking is that whenever you must do this, you'd be far better off by thinking about it again and doing more level 2 items instead, with their details then in level 3 siblings.

This way, "EVERYTHING IS VISIBLE" (AND DE-COMPACTED, which isn't possible in 1-pane outliners), and that's a hefty advantage of mm over other techniques whenever you do planning or analysing work.

And, mm is a perfect means to "teach you" my motto (I have mentioned elsewhere): Make it hierarchical, yes, in order to get a first and main systematic framework for your material, BUT HOLD THAT HIERARCHY AS FLAT AS POSSIBLE:

And when I say, mm maps are perfect teachers for that motto to be adhered to, it's totally simple: When your mm map looks convoluted, you did NOT adhere to my motto, and when you re-arrange things as long as it gets to become a much better-looking map, heureka, it will be one considerably flattened-out!

Hence, mm maps are a PROOF for the validity of my "hold it flat" tenet, hence the multiplication of maps OR big maps, that in their big-map version necessarily convoluted, but that will - if you follow my maxim "more siblings, less grand-grand-grand-children" on the deepest levels - be as neat as the multiple maps, once you go down to the sub-branches that would constitute separate maps within the first model (= items level 0 in multiple maps, so items 1 in a big-map, here levels 1, 2, 3, 4 becoming levels 2, 3, 4, 5), and trigger "display current branch only".

III - Power Markers 1, 2, 3

I've been too late. In fact, there has been a work-around for clones, not over several maps - "of course" not, given the fact that nobody out there's willing to get into real coding troube but then present overwhelming results -, but over one map at least, which is the reason for my detailing the acceptability of the big-map paradigm above in Part II.

In fact, if you analyse a very big project, you would not split it up into many connected separate maps, but you would do a big map for that project, but work only on these level 1-entities (= which are equivalent to the level 0-source-items in multiple maps), by doing bookmarks or such for these level-1 items, go to them by shortkeys or mouse clicks in a list (as you would do with multiple maps in order to display them), and then, after triggering (best: by macro = 1 step: "show "virtual map 4 within a 20-map "big-map" AND ONLY show that "map 4" there"), and then work on that virtual sub-map, as you'd work onto map 4 of 20 different maps.

But now comes Power Marker (Poma, PM is Project Management, let's not create chaos) - ok, we're in Poma, und thus, MM country here. Even without Poma, you can put various "markers" onto your items, and then, you can "filter" for such markers, and even for combinations of them, but this will give weird graphical presentations. So back to Poma: It creates a second outline view (the main outline view being implemented in native MM), but here, the tree is by the marker(s) of your choice.

You got it, Poma for MM creates alternative trees, on-the-fly (cf. askSam)!

Now you wouldn't expect to have this even in the graphics, but then, you don't have clones, so you'll assign categories to items, with markers, and then, you'll get that tree showing these "marked" items only. That's far from perfect, but it's far more than you'll get anywhere else, except perhaps for clones in FM maps whenever they might be debugged.

Now, Poma 1 was 40 bucks (I suppose), Poma 2 was 40 bucks. Should have known about it then.

Well, then Mindjet get aware that Poma was a feature MM should have got by native implementation - and they are perfectly right about that. Now, what they did, is this: They bought Poma (hence non-availabilty from both sources for Poma 2 from then on), and they quickly brought out Poma version 3, with (if I dare trust the web, some Mindjet blablah about Poma, and minor debugging) - and they sold it for 2 times the price, which made that 80 bucks.

Should have bought then, anyway. (but wasn't aware of it of course)

Now, MM 2012, with integrated Poma! And the same is also integrated into version 11 (again, attention please, "11" comes AFTER "2012" - you cannot repeat this enough since at this very moment, the web is saturated with offers like "MM 2012, ONLY 430 euro / 600 bucks" - well, not even the current version 11 is even more expensive than that).

So, in my case, I'm stuck with a free version 8.2, without the chance to get Poma for that, and the total unwillingness to buy version 11, with Poma integrated, but at a price of more than 400 euro.

But then, I got an old trial version of Poma on my hdd (downloaded when I hadn't got MM yet, then forgot about it), so I'll can at least trial now (14 days only, I fear).

SO, I'm looking forward to buying, from someone having bought / updated to MM 2012 or MM 11, his unused Poma 2 (version 1 seems to have been buggy) or 3. (Look out for it in the web, on ebay worldwide or such: nada.)

Fact is: MM 11 is expensive and not outstanding, but it has got very good and highly needed features, so as for the competition.

Sideline: There are some PM offerings for MM that rely on synching back and forth with MS Outlook, i.e. relying heavily on Outlook's corresponding features in order to make them available for MM. I got both progs, but I'm not a fan of that integration. The MM-inherent graphic capabilities should be enhanced, not some info features from elsewhere brought within MM maps instead: That's good in its own way, but it's not a good replacement for all that's missing.

I'm looking forward to reconstitute my c: image every 30, 28, 21...14 (OMG!) days in the future, before being able to afford MM 12 or 13, at last.

Which shows that even third-rate solutions get much addiction (if not love), when first-rate solutions ain't available at any price.
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