UR and mind map software

[Jon Polish]

I'm pretty sure that Freemind implemented clones a few betas ago. They are currently on Beta 8 (Sept 2012).

Jon

[schferk]

Jon, thank you a lot, by googling, this info doesn't become evident (EDIT: I meant by "mind map cloned item" and such, "freemind clone" will find it immediately! Introduced in May, 2012). If that's working, it'd turn the mm world upside down: A(n even last year) rather primitive freeware has the key function missing from any known commercial sw. Will report back.

EDIT : The user guide is for v. 0.8.0, and the info I found about cloning in FM:

http://freemind.sourceforge.net/wiki...e_New_Features

seems to indicate that cloning is possible within the same map only (I've become a cynic and think that they would tout it if was otherwise, AND overall functionality last time I trialled FM was so bad that I come to the same conclusion from this pov. And there is, "This should work after saving and loading later on, too.", which seems to indicate even cloning within a given map is stable. AND you get what you pay for (e.g. DNS Legal: 949 euro, about 1250 bucks), so re sourceforge... I said I'm a cynic.). And yes, I've ceased to download all sort of crap just for trialling, I'm not believing in Santa Claus anymore. (Cf. GiveAwayOfTheDay with all that crap, crippled versions and so on. Most sw out there is only time-consuming rubbish.)

In a positive mood: The above-mentioned FM wish list is a good point of departure if you like to construct perfect mm sw (i.e. sometimes, collaboration is very helpful).

[schferk]

More details

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.

[schferk]

I

EDIT (above >10k) :

Have got 1 (14 days) and 3 (30 days), and the user guide for 3 - almost 80 pages! - lotsa detail for a third-class work-around...

II

Oh, and there's also a VERY smart (and successful) little gem: GyroQ (gyronix.com). I don't see the necessity to buy the 50 bucks prof version, but even the 30 bucks standard version has a very neat feature.

First, let me explain. You trigger GyroQ from wherever, you enter "must get milk from the grocer", you enter "enter", and you go on with your work, i.e. you gather, in the neatest possible way, ideas, things to do, etc., etc.

At the end of the day - or whenever you like -, you open MM and will have got all these little things into a special MM map, and from which you then will distribute all this to the right target locations.

So much for version 1.

Version 2 (= the one you now buy for 30 bucks) goes way beyond this:

You trigger GyroQ (let's say by F12 or whatever), then you enter "gr must get milk", and the "must get milk" thing will be put as a child to the branch "grocer" within that special map!

You'll do the same with 19 more possible such codes (separated by a space, as you will have understood by your own means, I'm sure), and there are even some very special codes that trigger more elaborate macros, e.g. a swot analysis (I doubt if this is really needed from an external mini tool, instead of from within the map, preferably).

Of course, I know, this is all rather rudimentary since it would also be possible - but isn't with the current version of GyroQ - to put such clippings to the "inboxes" of the maps in question, or of the level 1 virtual maps within a "big-map", by according codes.

But that code thing is really smart, and I say this all the more so since I have discovered such coding for my own needs, years ago in a macro tool, since being replaced by even more elaborate macros in AHK.

Whenever I put a clipping into a new item, in my IMS, from let's say IE8, I do F7, then I enter (in a pop-up dialog) the title of the new item = sibling I want to create where the focus is at the time in my IMS, then press "enter".

Now, if I want to create a child instead of a sibling, I dont do
F7TitleEnter, but

F7.TitleEnter

And if I am in a siblings range that all constitute children of an item I want the new item to be created as a sibling to, i.e. when I want to create an uncle of the current focus item, I do
F7,TitleEnter

(on my kb, the keys being "bnm,.-", so it's partly mnemonic)

And when I want to create the new item within my general inbox, since the current item is not suitable as a sibling or parent of the new item, I do
F7;TitleEnter

Since I got about 10 intermediate files (as I explained in length), with 10 more specific inboxes, I can also do, for the new item to be created within the "m" inbox (all these are 1-character):
F7-mTitleEnter

And since I got, in every one of these 10 intermediate files, a list of all the respective more specific files (all these would be sub-branches of your big tree in UR), and all these entries there function as "most-specific" inboxes, I can also do:
F7-mg-TitleEnter

in order to create the new item as a child of the mg entry within the m file - the second "-" being necessary because these "mg" and such can be 2 or 3 chars long, but an "m" before the "mg" isn't necessary because the "mg" might be in several such 1-char files, but only the one "mg" being in the "m" file should be served as an inbox; and how to target that "mg" entry within the "m" file? In going to the m file, then making sure focus is in the tree, then "home", then just entering not the "mg", but an ".mg", and this isn't search but the normal way to go to items in trees, just be sure there isn't another "mg" before, and in order to be always sure of this, file names in my files begin with a ".", that's only there as a coding sign, in order to jump to ".mg", by entering ".mg", or to OPEN the mg file when I press "enter" on such a ".mg" entry.

So you see, there is a lot of coding and code-checking going on behind the scenes, and a lot of working on strings, but on the surface, it's more than easy, SLICK TO THE EXTREME.

And in fact, I just decided to NOT buy GyroQ, in view of the fact that there's isn't but 20 such codes you can do there. By AHK, I can do the same, not as pretty, but with much more functionality, much more codes to be processed, as I detailed above.

Up to know, I had just elaborate creating-new-items-exactly-where-I-want macros for importing clippings from IE8, but it's more than easy to do just the same for ideas to be imported into multiple MM maps - or into your various UR sub-branches.

III

Oh, and for that, YOU SHOULD UPDATE TO UR VERSION 5 !

Because with this update, you'll get 200 favorites instead of just some, and if I were you, to write the according UR macros, I'd do it with jumping to favorites! 100 inboxes, 100 favorites left for other purposes.

WARNING, though: Once you'll create AHK macros, YOU'LL NEVER STOP !


EDIT : Oh, important detail, I forgot: Of course, in II, when the entry dialog is displayed, the screen will have changed to my IMS (it will revert to IE8 later on), so that I can SEE which one is the current file, and the current item there, when I do my entry (perhaps coded accordingly, or not), so I never must decide on these in the dark!

AND : You will have got that the interest of "coding" (those leading ".", ",", etc.) is to avoid those amateurishly-designed dialogs that force the user to click on several checkboxes, buttons, and so on: Worse, if it's checkboxes, you don't even know beforehand at which state they are at any given moment, so the user has to check, to act his mouse, perhaps on 2 or 3 elements within the box - all this is amateurish rubbish - and the GyroQ people HAVE GOT THIS, and do it a much better way, as I do. Just their SCOPE is too limited, 20 codes for similar level-1 target items within only ONE pre-selected map isn't enough, when you could have various targets in multiple maps, for the same "price" (meaning, there isn't any additional coding difficulty for the developer, but it would make a big enhancement for the user: hence my, again, doing it by AHK).

AND : It seems that Poma 2, and hence Poma 3 (not speaking of Poma1), in spite of the 78 pages of User Manual, only can extract attributes lists for ONE attribute in a row, not for a combination of 2 or 3. But again, even that, having things together by one attribute, in a clickable (and I hope, exportable??? YES YES YES!!!) list, that might be graphically spread over (remember, you need the big-map, since no assembling over different maps!) 1,200 or 2,000 items, is a treat, comparing to what the competition delivers.

[schferk]

Miscellanea

I

In order to make this perfectly clear, I do NOT advocate putting your reference material into any mm sw (you can read such crazy advice in the web); remember they say "if all you have got is a hammer, all your problems appear to be nails" (or something like that); the problem is twofold: mm sw is unsuited for reference material; on the other hand, IMS' are not exactly unsuited for planning, idea finding, etc., but there might be better tools to do that.

II

That Gyronix do NOT allow you downloading any (15 day) trial sw with a disposable mail account but manually check for the validity of your data - the reason why I never trialled that thing. But now, I found a download address that functions direct, without giving them your info first:

http://www.gyronix.com/fulldownloads.php

The "Results Manager" there is expensive and does NOT seem to do what I want (?), it manages multiple pages, but it seems to be sorts of a data-pushing tool for serving a "dashboard" - will perhaps have a look, but it seems more to be a PM thing (and an ugly one for that) - as said above, and as with MM as a depository for stored data, many people out there try to convince you to use MM for just everything, and of course for PM, and the RM seems to be the thing that would help you in doing that (badly).

As for the "DecisionMill 3", well, version 2 seems to have been at 50 bucks, whilst v. 3 is 290 bucks or such... (but since I know now how to download all this stuff, why not trialling?)

Whilst I'm positive of scripting for my IMS, to tell the truth, I don't know at this point how to do the respective macros for MM (should search for the MM "programming" reference or such) - so after all, I'll perhaps run GyroQ in parallel with my similar AHK macros for the IMS. And here's the good new:

At this time, you can buy (standard = "essential") GyroQ for about about 16 bucks (9 English pounds plus vat, to be precise, which is a steal), incl. vat (instead of 29 bucks plus vat), here:

http://www.murge.com/products/mindMa...oq/pricing.asp

The only quirk here is, payment by google (!) is mandatory (so I will have to create a google account just for that, then forget about that account and delete all possible cookies and such).

III

And finally, there also is "Mind Map Navigator", for about 50 bucks (for MM 7 and 8 which don't have a native outline, but for just 9 or 11 bucks for MM 9 and later, which DO have these native outlines), and which does an outline... but from ALL open MM maps - could become convoluted? If I want 1,800 items in a row, I use my IMS, right?

But then, it also searches over all open MM maps, and gives a result table - which makes me wonder if there is a viable possibility to have neat and quick results with this when you do a global search for "tags" within the items (meaning at the end of the "title" or of the "text" which, remember, is technically the same here in MM items), perhaps in the form .ap .xt or #2 #tp or whatever.

Remember here that you need an external search tool like dtsearch if you want to do the same with several db's in UR, e.g., so this way of pseudo-3-dimensionality would perhaps be acceptable, especially in light of the fact that here you could have such functionality with multiple maps, whereas Power Markers (external or now native in MM) will always force you to build up a monster map and then handle that; connected, multiple maps are so much neater, and so I have high hopes in "MMNforMM" before having trialled it at least (and no need for illegal continuous use of defunct trial sw either).

P.S. Looking forward to use GyroQ, will be a joy I'm sure! And will result in even lower fuss in your way of putting down your ideas, meaning that you'll put it there even when, for the fuss of switching to your IMS and back, you would probably not save an idea "too little to justify the effort" - which means, the barrier is lowered, and hence your "flow" is increased... even for the better ideas. What I mean is, the more it is easy to store even minor ideas, i.e. EVERY possible idea, the more likely it will become that even the better ideas will come much more easy.

[schferk]

SORRY for having mislead you (and new insight into TheBrain).

Forget my musings about mm "big-maps", about Power Markers, and about MM 11 being worth its price in view of it having Poma integrated; as I already said, any "real clone" solution that's not going trans-maps is worthless, too.

In fact, I didn't try big-maps, I only imagined them, in order to become Poma (or MM 11's integrated Poma) a workable work-around - forget it.

When you imagine big-maps containing 1, 2, 3 dozen of "virtual maps", don't fall into my misconception to imagine them as big concept maps / cognitive maps, with their perhaps 1, 2, 3 dozen of planitary sub-system: I had those pictures in my mind, also PB/TB, so my mistake to explain to you that your level 1 items could replace my level 0 items - in the mm tools I know, they can NOT.

In fact, in an mm (correct me if I'm wrong), only the one 0 level item then gets radial children, whilst any level from 1 down gets children not in the carpet, but in the rug direction, i.e. you'll get the W/O kind of descendants, left-to right or right-to left, there's NO multiple sun systems.

But we convened, if I dare say, that mm's idea / main advantage is RADIAL representation of factors, points, details (and I said that this works so well, might be so because such graphics trigger similar "physically working maps" in our brain tissue), hence of NOT representing them in a false sequence, as in sequential text or in W/O diagrams ("false" not meaning that for programmational top-down developments (but form them only), W/O would be wrong) -

and then, if it were otherwise, millions of people out there would use b-liner, whilst in fact (or from what Mindjet say), millions of people out there use MM alone (as said, they have numerous advantageous university licenses, making MM free for such students, and that greatly helps in creating the real big numers - but fact is, plenty of corporations use MM alone, whilst b-liner doesn't even has got the necessary money to debug for the bugs you bring to their attention).

This meaning, no way to do a big-map in MM or elsewhere, since your poor sw (Poma, Poma integrated into MM 2012 and 11) will then be able to list those items sharing this attribute, but you won't have virtual mm maps to work in, it's just 20 or so of W/O diagrams, not 20 or so mm maps.

This meaning, very clearly, MJ bought the WRONG add-in: Yes, the prettier one, but not a functional one - any mm map becoming big enough to make "necessary" such (one-map-only) add-ins as Poma, are misconceptions in themselves, to begin with!

In other words, BREAK DOWN mm maps, again and again and again, and THEN they will become most useful for you!

...

[schferk]

(...)

Sideline: PB, now TB, PRESERVES the "multiple suns" with their respective orbital systems (whilst the mm big-map does NOT do that, as we've come to see). I'm very sure now that it's THIS factor which is behind the not-neglectable interest that TB has met with the general public - so I'm all the more so astonished that this usp does not seem to have been communicated before, neither by them, not by their followers (I've read much of their material and much of what has in been said in their forum, but preservation of (more or less) radial representation when looking at virtual sub-maps there has never come by - did I miss the corresponding parts?).

But it occurs to me that the free version of TB doesn't offer some graphic representationional alternatives on the micro level that the pro version offers indeed, which seems to strongly indicate that the developers of TB know exactly where their usp is, even though they don't to seem be eager to communicate it - as for their propaganda, they do their monster maps, again and again, in full, i.e. present you with chaos, when in fact, it's the cutting down (and what you see then) that might be the real - potential - advantage of their product.

In fact, TB is NOT that good, in my experience, at separating those "virtual micro maps", AND at displaying them in a really good way (and stable, i.e. next time you show that micro-map, it should look exactly the same, without your needing to do manual tweaking for that: the other big advantage of mm tools!). I must say that in my past trialling TB, I had not turned my attention to this - also because I never had a big-map there to trial on (!), since unfortunately, they are clearly NOT interested in getting new customers (that would of course need bring their existing material with them, i.e. would need to import it into their future TB monster-map) - even their reactions to askings for better import facilitites clearly show this.

My overall impression with TB is, they did NOT yet resolve the problem how to do interconnections (no, not even in TB 7, where they made another try at this), and they did NOT resolve the problem how to "list" those "micro-maps" for immediate access of them: Of course, TB allows for having ANY item as the level-0 item of such a micro-map, but it's exactly this "too much plasticicity" that makes TB a PERMANENTLY UNSTABLE representation of your material and of your problems to solve.

A better TB way would be to have (why not by a "PM" tree?!) standard "lists of views" (that must remain stable!), and into which you could enter any such item, becoming such a "view" = a stable micro-map.

These micro-maps must show links to other parts / other micro-maps / or simply to the TB "cloud" (meaning "somewhere" within the TB monster-map), as non-introding nodes working as links, but without everything "behind" those, and it would be a very good idea to have those links automatically showing, near them and in a minor font, their (perhaps multiple) "parents" (and why not making those clickable, too?) - but beware, it would be ONE such item, visible on the screen, and then any additional info of that "out-link" (= out of the current stable micro-map) as (rather minuscule) info as you'd have in "commentaries" and such in mm tools, i.e. further possible link "offers" by TB should be non-intrusive (whilst, if I'm not mistaken, TB currently shows such "further links" as additional, normal items, together with the respective connect lines, and this, of course, unacceptably bloats your present "stable micro-map".

In other words, as long as such "micro-maps" are not automatically graphically rendered in order to emulate their counterparts in mm, i.e. separate micro-maps there, but are just raw subsets of a monster-map, with "out-links going anywhere", users are well advised to stay with their collection of mm maps instead - and problably with their collection of MM maps, MM allowing for MNforMM, whilst most other mm sw don't have such integration as a work-around for not having native trans-map listing by attributes (let alone trans-map cloning).

(I know TB has rather good searching, but that cannot help, they're not allowed to rely on search, in order to do better conceptual work. It goes without saying that what I've got in mind, is perfect 3-dimensionality, too: Why not have such "stable micro-maps" with DIFFERENT sets of items, belonging there, in one scenario, and with some items considered as "outlinks-only", whilst in another map, and with the same "paren", what was "outlink-only" in the first map, becomes the legitimate content of the micro-map in question, whilst other items / sub-branches are cut out, not leaving but the outlink alone. Automation of such functionality (= by attributes, etc.) would be more than difficult, but that's not even necessary here:

For the time being, just make the TB developers introduce semi-automated functionality for "clipping" such branches, and for "pulling-up" others, in order to first (manually, but quickly) "make" your respective micro-map, AND then, for "storing" these, so that whenever you go to such a map, it will be presented in the form you've shaped it into - and that would also imply a durable spatial representation. Then, whenever you add something "possibly relevant" to such "solid micro-maps", rather easy, technically: Every new element that's a child of a "legitimate element" in the respective map, it'll be shown, and every new child of something that's represented as an outlink only, in a given map, it'll not shown here, of course.)

People who will really have followed what I've presented here, will know by now that I consider all those "collapsing ways" (= cutting at the bottom = "hiding the details") of "presenting things in manageable sets" as a minor way that's only useful for some uses, whilst I advocate, for real working, the opposite way, which is "clipping above", i.e. showing all detail (except when they get too lengthy and might be put into external files, external "items", or just "note fields"), but then, have multiple, easily accessible, and easily "creatable" sets of such detailed views - and I advocate much better semi-automatics for your assembling disparate items into new such sub-sets (and then, their quick manual trimming (or even enlarging in order to pull in more items)). As I said elsewhere, TB is at least trying a litttle bit, but not trying enough here, and worse, they don't seem to be "open" for advice / collaboration. And as said elsewhere, there is AI, for one, but also, we should try to enhance not only artifical enhancement of HUMAN intelligence. TB as it is would be a good start, but there's a lot work to be done.

And remember, all what I've said here, is about the planning / synthesizing and the analyzing work: I do NOT consider TB a possible total-reference-and-archive db, just as I don't consider mm tools such a thing: UR is perfect for this.

(Also, allow a short clarification: that German organization advisor I spoke of, in reality, she advocates THREE sets of data (I'm pastiching here): that "thinking data" above, then "reference data" by what she understands something like data which has often to be looked up", and then, the bulk, the archive(d) data (I'm writing from memory so cannot claim to portray her system correctly here). I never was fond of such 3-part systems since at any moment, a lot of "archive" data is - or should be!!! - reference material, hence the 2-data-set system I'm after: "Work" - and then links to "material", be it material that you consult three times an hour, or just once in two years - of course, there would be differences in accessibility... besides, which could be half-automatted, the system bringing material you often need, "nearer" to you, whilst withdrawing, step by step, accessibility-wise, material you don't need as often (any more) - but this a totally new subject, complicating things another time.)

Off-topic: Another new info for me: Copernicus wasn't first, a certain "Aristarchus of Samos" being the man (or even somebody else, gone with History) - cf. wikipedia unter "heliocentrism": tremendously fascinating article there!).

TB users are invited to link here, from their forum.

As for me, I now will try to make that "MNforMM" working for me, since my intuition to preserve my multiple micro-maps was right, as I've shown here. MJ would be well-advised to have some thinking in the directions broached above.

MM users are thus invited to link here, from their forum, too.




EDIT : Re GyroQ
Sorry, I had made a mistake in my reading the Essential vs. Prof. comparison table. My wishful thinking misleading my vision: Creating your own codes being the last of the "essential" checks. Now, checking again before buying, I see it's the first of the "prof." checks. In view of the numerous deficiencies of this tool (cf. above), the most important being that 20-codes limit for either version, I think I better do it within AHK, incl. instant access to my about 40 or so different maps from anywhere (impossible by GyroQ means anyway), at this time (and fast getting more). Even 29 pounds plus vat would have been a steal if it did what I want it to do, but not with only half of that, and then that risible 20-targets-only limit. Whilst AHK has accustomed me to not having any more limits to accept in what I'm doing, scripting-wise, and since MM allows for external scripting, the respective commands for docking new elements onto given level-1 items within one map must be listed somewhere, and then why not having a standard level-1 item "Inbox" in EVERY one of my MM maps, and send new ideas directly to those (provided they're not immediate-action ToDo's, of course).

[schferk]

GyroQ Update :

For non-programmers, it's impossible to access internal MM commands (whilst for programmers, there are ways). On the other hand, GyroQ (Prof only, "Essential" is worthless, so we speak about 49 bucks plus VAT here, but it's more than worth it) opens up a whole ecosystem around MM, by its integrated GyroActivator which is nothing other than a little macro language giving access to many internal MM commands you otherwise couldn't access by your own non-programming means, and which then can be triggered by the GryroQ dialog, or, in a much smoother way, by any (commercial or free) external macro / scripting tool (that you use for all your things anyway) that is able (that's the only, easy condition there) to do "launch program" commands.

In other words, you launch the little GyroQ scripts by your macro tool, e.g. AHK (or even text expander tools), where you assign kb shortcuts or special trigger words to commands like

PathOfGyroQ.exe "NameOfYourGyroQScript"

That's all. So you buy GyroQ Prof in order to get the underlying GyroActivator macro language, and then, you'll be able to do anything of what I said I'd like to do above, and much more, and it's up to you if you additionally use the "native" use of GyroQ, i.e. its above-described dialog on a regular basis, here and there, or even not at all.

You can download an about 90-page pdf that explains it all:

https://gyronix.zendesk.com/attachme...2-Help-Eng.pdf

But then, even better, under the url

http://www.activityowner.com

you'll get a splendid collection of scripts, tools, advice and help for that whole ecosystem that the developer has constructed around his GyroQ, and his ResultsManager (that costs a whopping 285 bucks plus VAT), but then, even what you'll find here around GyroQ, i.e. without having to buy the RM, is outstanding, incl. the (free) Outlinker tool, for connecting MM to MS Outlook, see also

www.outlinker.com

(Btw, I see there that armsys (who's also very active in this forum these days) has been knowning this GyroQ MM ecosystem for years, but then, I admit that it's only up to any person and his own decision, if he's going to share his knowledge that's clearly in the general interest, like I do, or if he's prefers to withheld any knowledge to himself, participating in fori in order to get even more info for himself, and more or less exclusively so. As said, I don't dare say the latter stance is criticizable in any way, even when I obviously have never shared it.)

So, it seems that MM, with the help of GyroQ Prof., could perhaps be made into a very smart DOUBLE use of being dashboard-AND-idea-collection system for UR, the former by means of UR's outstanding feature (in fact, there ain't so much competitors that make this available to you) of allowing deep links, and even for the latter, UR's deep linking feature would be very helpful it seems to me, whenever you just collect ideas within MM (i.e. avoid mixing-up of idea collection and dashboarding, with multiple linking), but have systematically a link from the source item of these MM idea maps to the corresponding (and mostly rather high-or intermediate-level there) UR items.

I'll certainly share my findings about smart interconnection between MM and UR, as I will have possibly found them in some weeks or some months, and this independently from the fact that there obviously are long-time MM-GyroQ-UR users (neither of which I am) who technically could have shared their respective smart hints, from their thorough experience with such a combination, years ago.

Anyway, it seems to me that a smartly devised MM-UR-Outlook (with a little help by Gyronix, thru 49 bucks) interactive workflow, being it within a small network or being it single-user only, clearly must have the utmost potential for your productivity; it would then be time that UR did a little homework to be on par within such an extraordinary combi.

(In theory, the same could be done with other such mm tools, but then, the missing link would be a tool like GyroQ - which clearly shows the exceptional benefits of a (marketing-leader) sw around which there has been developed an ecosystem of its own (similar to Word, Excel, Outlook, Access, sql db's, etc.).

[schferk]

On ResultsManager and integration in general

In some post above, I think I said that RM was "ugly". That's not really true. The really ugly screenshots are right on their introductory page for RM, but squeeze too many different things / several real screenshots into just some "screen" there, and that doesn't seem to be a realistic representation of the thing (see below where in 70 minutes I did not see ANY such cramped & divided screen), so they harm their own marketing interests by seemingly "false representation". (EDIT : In fact I had been mislead by too a tiny and not enlargeable screenshot of theirs, that showed a screen cluttered with FIVE minuscule windows each representing another part of what RM is able of.)

Another thing is that RM makes ample use of the MM subbranch borders which I don't find pretty and which always remind my of ugly address tags for your luggage.

I have visioned a 70 min. "webinar" on RM here

http://www.gyronix.com/webinars/box/gtdsg0210/

and can now say that RM is far from being as "technical" as I had thought (= pulling up number and such), but does "real" PM within MM, but in a very "macro" way, i.e. the developer himself recommends doing the "global update" just two times a day, in the morning and then after lunch, because then, a bunch of macros start, needing their time to complete, and doing a lot of "gathering anew, again and again" and "re-creating all your consolidation stuff from scratch every time" (= I suppose this, no diffamation intended if I'm totally wrong here), so if I'm right (and I seem to be, from the above), MM (and with its lack of native clones, hence the necessity to build up "virtual clones" by just copying and building up the same things, again and again and again, while you wait for this crazy "external macros doing their duty" to come to an end) is, technically-wise, certainly not the PM tool of your choice if doing heavy PM work.

On the other hand, that MM-and-RM combi is able (with the above limitations) to deploy PM even to little groups, let'ts say 5 or 8 people, in a more or less interactive way, with personnalized views for the different group members (but as for real-time updating of consolidations of gathered data, I maintain my doubts, for the time being). So, let's remember UR's network capabilities here, and envision, as I said before, possible MM-UR integration, even for groups / little networks!

As said before, the whole RM tool seems to be a triggered-macro system, but an incredibly sophisticated one, and as such it seems to be no "real native sw" if I dare say, but an enormous (and very complicated and very smart) work-around - but then, you'd wish, at any moment, that all this elaborate functionality it provides, should be natively come from somewhere, meaning the real-time updating of every little bit that should be updated, instead of the seemingly building-up from scratch of the needed dashboards and such, two times a day, and not really knowing the state of your system when it comes to the details, in-between, and it's evident that these probs get worse with every collaborator who's joining the network.

AND, of course, RM is for MM-PM integration only, and there does not seem to be any connectivity to further needs, e.g. having the 100,000 or so data items within your UR db - also made available to anyone in the network, by UR's means, but then, how to administered within that MM PM system? Meaning, there would be a lot of further scripting be needed to be done, by the GyroQ functionality and on top of what RM delivers, with lots of possible problems from the interaction of such threads being triggered from several such external tools, all the more so within a network.

On the other hand, much of the RM functionality could be "mirrored" / replicated by GyroQ scripts, i.e. if there are things that RM does, and you would like your integrated system to do these, GyroQ scripts or a set of such scripts could do this (cf. the incredible MindReader tool constructed from such scripts, and also available for free at the above-mentioned activityowner site - I had just inadvertently left out the mention of their MR above; and another detail: that "how to get out a max of Gyronix products" site is maintained by sombody else, not by Gyronix, well, that's it's an absolutely outstanding resource, I said that before!).

I would have liked to tell you here, even RM is well worth it, but besides from the considerations above, there's another factor that makes me neither wanting to promote it, nor do I have the intention to buy it, at this time. Gyronix has made a formidable effort there, and for what it does, RM (not to be mixed-up with MR) should normally be "worth" the price. BUT: In the cited webinar, the developer 2 or 3 times (i.e. at least at about 48'45" and 55'00") shows and comments functionality in HIS version of RM, which are NOT included in the version he sells!

In fact, he mentions that these are available only to his customers who pay for his consulting services, and on their site, I must read that the consulting services (of the developer himself at least, don't know if there are also less expensive ones) are 700 bucks for 2 hours, see for yourself:

https://gyronix.infusionsoft.com/app...l?productId=59

What would you see if kinook told us that yes, there IS the intermediate consolidation level (that I've been asking for in this forum) in a special version of UR, as is trans-UR-db search and other goodies, but that's special version available only to kinook's consulting biz customers? Well, we all would have left the product, I suppose, and this forum would be dead, right? (For clarification: There is a standard, and a prof. RM, but the developer in the webinar mentions the price, 285 bucks, so this is NOT a misunderstanding on my side, the prof. RM having these features when only the standard version does not: No, he clearly states these feature are for those high-value customers only, and you bet I'd be very unhappy with that if I ever layed out 285 bucks plus vat for the crippled "prof." version.)

So, I think I'll do lots of GyroQ scripting instead, but interactively MM-MM, for - light (and, at this time, 1-person) - "PM", and for MM-UR and such (while having a close eye on the functional point of intersection, i.e. the "distribution" of "what should be done in MM, and what better be done within the UR / bulk info material part of the overall system?". The webinar doesn't address the question of where and how to stock the "material" and how to address it from that RM system, but then, we wouldn't be here in the UR forum if that wasn't the core question in our workflow.

Anyway, there's another aspect to this: Their product "DecisionMill" (297 bucks plus vat) should have been integrated into RM, instead of being sold separately, or, more precisely:

I strongly advocate integration of PM into decision making and vice versa, meaning both should be an integrated, iterative process.

E.g., you often must dive into a lot of detail, i.e. into a lot of "PM" style planning, in order to assez the financial (= inherent costs) and / or technical feasibility of parts of your projects, and so, your decision making depends on the realization = "PM" part, and vice versa: within the PM, there will be lots of alternatives, viable or not, and it's advisable to trigger decision-making techniques re the more important of them at least, since it could save lots of ressources (manpower, money, etc.).

In fact, the absence of both integrated decision-making features and "stuff storage" (or sophisticated linking functionality for the latter) in traditional PM tools is a predominant reason many people do PM in outliners and such, instead of trying to organize themselves within the (more specific, but otherwise twofold insufficiant) functionality of PM or PM-related sw.

[schferk]

armsys asks me in another thread : "Have you actually ever exercised due diligence in experimenting with products before publishing your magnificent manifestos here? For example, for RM, have you actually tested your RM dashboard(s) with topics/tasks embedded in 30 or more respective mission-critical mindmaps?"

I did not even install the trial, and I never pretended to have done so, but I'm VERY interested in replicating that part of its functionality that'd be sensible to have available in order to overcome the problem that no MM prog has got multi-map clones - as has no outlining prog either, btw.

And from what I see, it's perfectly possible to have such rather simple macros, for rather simple functionality, i.e. you might have 50 maps, where many items are "ToDo's", of different kinds. So what to do, in this simple scenario? You work on your topic maps, but you mark items that should be "shuffled up" into the different dashboards - 1 dashboard for 1 kind of "ToDo's", to begin with; also, combinations could be processed, later, with just a little bit additional scripting.

You "mark" them, I say. Well, this has to be done, and undone, fast. MM provides, among many more (but not so simply accessible) ways of marking, two ranges of symbol markers, "priority" 1 to 9, by shift-control-1...9 (the '^0 deleting a marker 1-8 that's there) - but you could use 1,2,3 for priority, and 4 to 9 for any other classification, e.g. Then, there are many more symbol markers that ain't prefigured, but that you assign yourself to ^1...^9 (the ^0 deleting, again) before using them - that gives you 18 such markers for a start, and if that's not enough, you then would add text markers, background colors, or other.

Sideline: As I said before, it's all about macro-driven, external "up-shuffling", i.e. copying these items into your dashboards that will be re-built again and again; in the web, people say that they wait for 45 min. for this being done - which means to me, it's all nothing but a technically primitive (even when highly-complicated, from the programmer's pov) work-around, so I doubt that such a system is really ready to fulfill the task armsys would like it to fulfill; I think real PM should not rely on outdated data the updating of which demands 45 min., with the system closed down for any use during this wait while rebuilding "everything further up" from scratch.

But I seriously think that before we get real clones - updated in real-time -, for less demanding, not too complicated 1-person uses, a macro system integrating multiple MM maps into dashboards could be viable, by lack of a better solution here; as explained, the use of an external applic building up, trans-maps, lists of such marked items, thus aggregating them into a list, by search, is an alternative - and also not real-time - solution, which does not deliver dashboards, but forces you to do the same searches for these (ToDo- and other) markers, again and again - that's why my preference goes to a very simplified and self-written RM system.

Side-line: Whilst for MM, you need an external add-in in order to build up a tree comprising the respective trees of several / multiple maps, it's VM that has got such a trans-map tree view (visible all the time, by option) in-built - but it does NOT seem to me that it will give you item selections there, by markers (will have to check this since that would make it a ready-for-use system, without dashboards, but with a little scripting...

Back to MM: What I've in mind, then, is simply shuffling up of marked items, by macro, into the respective dashboard, and THE MOMENT I MARK THEM. I.e. I wouldn't do '^4, e.g., for a given item within any of my working maps, but would trigger a macro that would do the '^4, but also copy the item into the "dashboard 4" map - this is perfectly possible under condition that you always load all the dashboard maps, so that they are available in memory, for receiving such operations.

On the other hand, whenever I delete a marker (!) of an item in any map, a macro would delete the copy (!) of that item from the respective dashboard map. And, whenever I delete an item (!) from any of the dashboards, a macro would delete the respective marker (!) of the original of that item in the respective map

- well, it's possible that such two-way processing is too complicated or cannot be realized, from lack of a command which would be necessary for this macro to work, within the macro language that GyroQ makes available. Then, I would indeed be in the same situation as the RM users are who need to let build RM up the dashboards, from scratch, once or twice a day: of course, a script to build these dashboards up in a row

(and not bit by bit, in real time, whenever you change a marker or a marked item

(in fact, another macro would be to change the text of the item in the dashboard, when you change the text of a marked item in a work-map; the other way round, again, there might be probs),

by checking every item, for markers, in a non-dashboard map, and then processing it accordingly, doesn't present any technical problem, but of course is awkward by the waiting time it imposes upon the user.

Sideline: Updating dashboard items from changes in "originals" is easy, since the marker of the "original" would identify the respective dashboard map (abstraction being done here from any possible combis, of course, but that could be processed sequentially, one marker a time); the other way round, there could be a prob since there isn't any marker to identify the "original" 's map (= where to look for the item to be updated "downwards", and so, it would be possible that downward-updating is impossible or asks for too much processing power (i.e. e.g. by searching all maps for that item, by content).

You see here that from a technical pov, it's really pc-stone-age processing of data, so let's hope there will be trans-map clones some day: If you have to do such amounts of external scripting for simple commands (remember, if there were clones, any of these items anywhere could be identified / addressed by unique identifier numbers, to begin with), there simply isn't enough internal code that has been done, and that's not good. What I mean is, from a technical pov, there's a tremendous difference between internal functionality and heavy external scripting: 45 min. wait time for updating your data, e.g.