[Vym-forum] Suggestions for VYM

[Nelson T. <nel...@gm...>]

Hello, Uwe,

I like and use a lot you software and I was thinking in bringing you some
suggestions for quite some time. As you are planning in adding some changes,
I think this is the right moment to write them to you.

Initially, have you ever considered in using the excellent wxWidgets
framework instead of Qt ?

http://www.wxwidgets.org

I'm giving you this suggestion for 2 reasons:
First I see Qt, as much as I see Java. For as long as the companies who
create these tecnologies have good intentions about open source software and
their users, they're companies. Their goal is profit. They can be sold,
their board of directors may take a different direction whenever they like
or a new board can assume with a different view, so nobody really guarantees
this tecnology's stability.
I had a terrible experience with Delphi, which was very popular in Brazil
and I used for 10 years seeing Borland took many stupid decisions along the
way as changing major ways to do things, with no backward compatibility for
several times, forcing you to rewrite long parts of your code if you wanted
to keep up with this technology's state of the art.
The final blow was the CLX issue. Delphi was until Delphi 5 version a
windows only language and Delphi's user community asked for a long time a
way of developing multi-platform applications. So Borland listened to this
and created CLX library that was the multi-platform counterpart (or
bi-platform counterpart because it was Windows-Linux only) for it's native
component library, VCL, which was windows only. So, when Delphi 6 was
released with it, it was very well received by the community which raised
their fingers and said "way to go Borland". Delphi 7 strengthen this
maturing CLX and to me it was the best Delphi version that ever existed.
Then after Delphi users took a very long time to learn this libray and have
taken hard decisions about their projects as practically write them again
because CLX has a very different way of doing things, Borland turned over
180 degrees and released Delphi 8 which completely abandoned CLX and
compiled for .NET only. Is this stupid enough ? This was the end of Delphi
and it's ENORMOUS project base (at least is Brazil). They tried to correct
their mistake, releasing Delphi 2005 which compiled win32 again, but still
abandoned CLX. No good. Delphi had another version and was discontinued by
Borland. Micro$oft influence ? perhaps.
When this events took place I have to abandon a technology which I where in
guru level to start all over again in another language. So I careful
researched several technologies using as criteria, being completely Gnu
compliant or "free as in freedom", being active, having a large user and
software base, having extensive documentation, being mature, being complete
and being close to my own way to doing things. I tried also to predict which
were the most stable technologies and with all these things in mind, I have
chosen some: in the desktop area I have chosen C++ as my language of choice
because technologies come and go but there are 2 languages that simply don't
die: C++ and Cobol. Cobol isn't a choice for obvious reasons. But C++ is THE
most stable and powerful language around. For database I have chosen the
excellents PostgreSQL and Firebird, for web development I've chosen PHP, for
Desktop IDE for C++ I chosen Code:Blocks and for component framework I
chosen wxWidgets. And I still maintain there choices, although these are
personal choices and the company I work for has a different view - Java
technologies.
So I'm writing you all this to say, that to be really free we should try to
focus on true community created technologies, who are financed by companies
but aren't company's property, because the decisions of which way to go may
be much influenced by the financing company, but the originating community
will always have a great deal of influence on the path this technology is
taking. That's not the case in technologies created by companies.

Second wxWidgets is an excellent framework (I think better than Qt) with an
enormous list of components/functions, many good softwares made on it, very
fast, primarily created for C++ (although it can be used with many
languages), the code created with it is completely portable to a myriad of
platforms with no need for any specializations (windows, linux, mac, palmos,
wince to name a few, which isn't the case for Qt - it has less compatible
platforms), complete i8n support, completely free - GPL, very mature with
many years of development, used by many major companies/corporations (Xerox,
Nasa, Amd, AOL, Caltech and many many others:
www.wxwidgets.org/about/users.htm), in very active development with releases
every couple weeks, some very good and mature development IDEs (as
Code:Blocks and wxDevcpp), many very good softwares made with it (pgAdmin3,
Audacity, Flamerobin, Kirix Strata, Amule, AOL communicator, Forté free
agent, Boinc, Tortoise CVS, Amaya, some CAD applications and many others),
very good and extensive documentation, a very active community that quickly
solves any doubts. Well I think that's enough qualities. :)
So I think your project has much to gain with it. I used it some time ago in
a government institution I used to work and can help you with any problems
that can occur.

Enough for wxWidgets! :)

Another idea that I want to suggest you is that something I feel as missing
in VYM, is an integrated bank of images.
Tony Busan's (mind maps idealizer) original concept of mind maps, stressed a
lot the use of images in maps as a major concept fixation component. His
company's commercial solution for mind maps - Mind Mapper, is an excellent
mind-mapping software (I think it's the best one, although commercial) and
solves this magnificently with a lateral panel which is connected with a
local image database and connected with an huge image database completely
tag based and located in the company. It's search is very easy, quick and
efficient as this feature should be.
I think VYM would be greatly enhanced with such a feature, which I think, it
would be much more useful than some animations.
There are many free images on the web, and many free images packages with a
great deal of options for all tastes. One example is Open Clip Art Library (
http://www.openclipart.org) that could be used.
I tried to use several image organization and search programs, but this is
much less practical, and there are no really good free solutions in this
area or at least I don't know them and the ones that do exist, don't have
the features mind maps really need. So today I mainly do my maps without any
images. Of course it would be much better if I could find a practical way to
include them.

So this is all for know, I hope to have contributed a bit to the enhancement
of your already great software.

Nelson Teixeira,
Fortaleza - Brasil
--------------------------------------------------------------
Blog: Ao contrário - Vanguardismo retrô
http://www.aocontrario.com

P.S.: As I was writing you this email, wxWidgets site was down, but as it's
a very busy site, I think it should be back on-line soon.