I've used and liked mind maps very a long time, and I'm very picky about their appearance. I started with Tony Buzan's book, before there were programs to make mind maps. Mind Maps were among other things an excellent memory aid for me. I used to take meeting notes as mind maps in real time (by hand), and I found time after time that I could pick up one of them say five years later, and in five or ten minutes I could reconstruct the whole meeting. I also taught several graduate level classes using mind maps as my lecture notes. It worked wonderfully well.
I dislike almost all the mind mapping programs out there that I've tried, including the Brain, mostly because their appearance doesn't suit me, or the way you interact with them works poorly, etc., etc. I used to use the old Mind Manager product (I'm talking 15+ years ago) and liked that pretty well. But now the successor is way too complex and garbaged up, and pretty expensive to boot. So I don't use it. The one thing a mind map doesn't do is to show incoming edges - that is, "predecessor" nodes. That's not a bad thing, but it prevents one from moving freely around a large knowledge base. It's not the intended use of mind maps, so it's not defect in the basic idea. If you want to make effective use of a knowledge base it's a weakness, one that The Brain has tackled. But because of the emphasis on "thoughts", the Brain is weak on the relationships, which is where the real meat of a knowledge base is or should be. And I don't like the way their displays shift around. The zettelkasten approach is as you say about notes, but that's a superficial view. It's much more about the connections, and also, if we go along with the original, the "notes" are intended to be carefully thought out summaries of various thought fragments, not simply reminders dashed off in a hurry. Leo's basic structure of a node for everything has proved to be quite wonderful. It is limited a bit because the nodes are text only, but that's for the most part livable. A node has a single incoming edge (not counting clones - clones introduce a sort of hybrid model, and I don't want to get into it here). So if we want to have a node with multiple incoming edges, and outgoing edges that link to nodes that aren't "child" nodes, we need to carry more information, and we need a way to visualize and navigate the system. There are many ways to carry more link information. For the zettelkasten system I worked out some time ago (there are one or two threads on that from a year or more ago) I use gnx identifiers (Leo's internal node ids) with notation in each node's body to define a link. For my browser bookmark manager - still in progress - I use Leo's UNL paths to construct internal links each time a display is built. One could also use UAs (User Attributes) though I haven't felt the need to so far. It's the visualization and navigation of any system that is based on graphs that's the hard part. It's hard both from a design/UI point of view and from an implementation point of view. The really nice part of basing these systems on Leo is how easy it is to reorganize, restructure, and edit the information. I have found that to be a real strong point. The disadvantage is that there is no intrinsic graphical subsystem/API for displaying the information (preferably with links). I'm inclined to think that using Graphviz may be good for generating some of these displays. Since Graphviz is a stand-alone console-based C program, it may turn out that a server is needed to interact with it effectively. Leo already has the skeleton of such a server, and the leointeg project (that lets you work on Leo outlines in Visual Studio Code) is a proof of principle. Whew, that was longwinded! If you want to pursue this subject further, we should probably start a new thread. You can see that it's a topic I'm very interested in. On Monday, March 21, 2022 at 4:31:38 AM UTC-4 [email protected] wrote: > It doesn't surprise me. That's indeed the strength of the Brain (to me), > it is basically a mindmap but with the *current thought* as the center, > it's not hierarchical. In that sense it is different from an outlook. > OTOH, in zettelkasten I get the impression that the focus is on the taking > of notes in an outline, and just adding #tags and links between the notes. > I don't directly see there anything that leo couldn't do better. Can you > clarify what you have in mind here ? > > On Monday, March 21, 2022 at 6:01:46 AM UTC+1 [email protected] wrote: > >> I fooled around with a sample Brain project on the Brain's web site. I >> was able to import the "thoughts" and links. The project file contains a >> number of .json files, although they are not actually valid json. But it's >> possible to work with them anyway. So yes, it's not hard to do an import. >> The bigger question would be what kind of interface would work well with >> them and how it would fit into Leo's node system. Contrary to what I >> speculated above, the thoughts and their links do not look much like >> bookmark collections. Basically, each "thought" node has both incoming and >> outgoing links, potentially of any number. It is possible that they would >> fit into the zettelkasten paradigm, which is basically one way to >> synthesize multiple incoming and outgoing links. But whether that would be >> a good approach or not, the interface and display are what need to be >> invented. There would be no point in trying to reproduce what The Brain >> already has! >> >> On Friday, March 18, 2022 at 2:12:18 PM UTC-4 [email protected] wrote: >> >>> Actually, just the browser bookmark scripts and optionally the mind >>> mapping visualization, would probably do it. >>> >>> On Friday, March 18, 2022 at 2:07:27 PM UTC-4 [email protected] wrote: >>> >>>> Having downloaded one of the example brains, and looked at a few of the >>>> online examples, I'm coming to think that a combination of the browser >>>> bookmark manager scripts I'm working on together, perhaps, with the >>>> zettelkasten-style organizing scripts I offered in a different thread, >>>> would provide similar capabilities. Add some enhancements to the mind >>>> mapping script I provided a while ago, and we might be able to have a >>>> really good alternative. >>>> >>>> On Friday, March 18, 2022 at 11:28:31 AM UTC-4 [email protected] wrote: >>>> >>>>> I've tried TheBrain maybe three times over these many years. It >>>>> always seems so promising, and I always abandon it with frustration. >>>>> >>>>> On Friday, March 18, 2022 at 11:10:22 AM UTC-4 [email protected] wrote: >>>>> >>>>>> ... Now, maybe leo could also import TheBrain files ? ;-) >>>>>> >>>>> >>>>> Now there is an interesting idea. A Brain file is a .brz (not >>>>> actually .zip, but same idea). It has a lot of individual json files >>>>> that >>>>> obviously have to work together, along with some icon files. Much of the >>>>> data is metadata, which might or might not be of interest. The big >>>>> thing >>>>> to settle would be how present it all, and one big question there is >>>>> whether there can be cycles, and if so, how to handle them.. >>>>> >>>> -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "leo-editor" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. 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