Automatic edge color was the cool feature that made me choose freeplane over freemind several years ago. How do I get it back?? Am I just going to have to stay at 1.3.15 permanently?
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Freeplane 1.5.x uses map templates to encode edge colors.
As a consequence if user has modified its map template it looks like automatic edge color would not work properly. You can try delete your own standard.mm and I think it should solve it for you.
I have no idea how to communicate this change to users who do not asl questions in the forum.
I could rename the freeplane standard.mm to standard-1.5.mm to indicate this change, however it would not help if you also already changed your "Standard template file" option.
Preview 1.5.19_02 implements this change and also does not automatically copy user template files from 1.3 configuration. Try it.
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I found that changing the edge color in "Apply level styles" on editing template styles could affect "Automatic edge color" function. For example, if set all the edge colors as grey, all edge color of nodes created will be grey even though the Automatic edge color in property panel is set as "on branch creation". I create and modify my own template without touching the edge color in "Apply level styles", all the edge colors created are set automatically based on the Apply level styles in the template. I don't know whether this can help.
But there's no menu option to turn automatic edge colors on or off anymore though. Does this mean a map must permanently have automatic edge colors on or off, based on the template it was made from?
What about my old maps that have automatic edge coloring, but apparently have a template without it? If I try editing one of my usual mindmaps with 1.5.x, it stops doing automatic edge coloring.
Could you provide some documentation on templates? There isn't really much on the wiki about templates, how they work, where to get new ones, where they are kept on in your file system, what sorts of things they do and do not do. What sorts of things do/can the templates define? Which standard template .mm file should I use that will give automatic edge colors again? How do I tell the template to use automatic edge coloring, because I can't figure out how to make it work on my old maps for a few hours and I can't get it to do it. Even more mysterious is how abc163 got automatic edge coloring working starting below the root(??). Like How would I get it to use the "what's new" mind map as a template, but without all the pre-existing nodes? Where even is that file?
I try to open from template, browse up a few levels, and looked through every folder there in the freeplane appdata, but it doesn't exist.
I don't really know how to do conditional styles either, and probably never will, but are those predtermined by the template, or does the template over-ride them?
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Instead of the old menu item there is a new drop-down box called "Automatic edge color" in the format panel in the "Node style" section.
Freeplane 1.5.x takes information about the edge colors from level styles beginning with level style 1.
All templates included in the freeplane distribution contain edge color definitions. The solution does not work with the old maps until the colors are added. I do not know how it could be fixed because I just do not know how I could do it in a transparent way.
Probably if Freeplane finds that map style does not have edge color information and it is required for automatic formatting it should display a ("don't ask me again") question about completting the styles with the edge colors. If the user accepts all level styles should be added edge colors, otherwise automatic edge coloring should be disable for map.
How do you think, which solution would be the best?
About the documentation: Freeplane is a community driven product. Currently nobody writes and updates freeplane documentation. I am only responding to questions in the forum. If you or somebody else could contribute missing documentation parts in the wiki or in teh freeplane tutorial maps I would deepy appreciate it.
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Great! Trying it out right now! Some of the changes I'm seeing are terrific!
It has solved a couple of the problems I was having with 1.5, and even adds features I was asking for several years ago!
I see I can cusomize the available automatic edge colors, per map! I asked for that two years ago, and thought it had just been ignored!
Although... It's a bit of a pain having to manually add every single color, for Every single old map... It would be great if i could paste the same color set I use for all of them. But I won't complain! This change DOES make it so that I can migrate from 1.3 now!
Also, the annoying tab switching problem is now fixed! Hooray!
So, any word on when these features will be released on the stable build?
If you would like to refer to this comment somewhere else in this project, copy and paste the following link:
Automatic edge color was the cool feature that made me choose freeplane over freemind several years ago. How do I get it back?? Am I just going to have to stay at 1.3.15 permanently?
Freeplane 1.5.x uses map templates to encode edge colors.
As a consequence if user has modified its map template it looks like automatic edge color would not work properly. You can try delete your own standard.mm and I think it should solve it for you.
I have no idea how to communicate this change to users who do not asl questions in the forum.
I could rename the freeplane standard.mm to standard-1.5.mm to indicate this change, however it would not help if you also already changed your "Standard template file" option.
Preview 1.5.19_02 implements this change and also does not automatically copy user template files from 1.3 configuration. Try it.
I found that changing the edge color in "Apply level styles" on editing template styles could affect "Automatic edge color" function. For example, if set all the edge colors as grey, all edge color of nodes created will be grey even though the Automatic edge color in property panel is set as "on branch creation". I create and modify my own template without touching the edge color in "Apply level styles", all the edge colors created are set automatically based on the Apply level styles in the template. I don't know whether this can help.
Last edit: abc163 2016-12-17
But there's no menu option to turn automatic edge colors on or off anymore though. Does this mean a map must permanently have automatic edge colors on or off, based on the template it was made from?
What about my old maps that have automatic edge coloring, but apparently have a template without it? If I try editing one of my usual mindmaps with 1.5.x, it stops doing automatic edge coloring.
Could you provide some documentation on templates? There isn't really much on the wiki about templates, how they work, where to get new ones, where they are kept on in your file system, what sorts of things they do and do not do. What sorts of things do/can the templates define? Which standard template .mm file should I use that will give automatic edge colors again? How do I tell the template to use automatic edge coloring, because I can't figure out how to make it work on my old maps for a few hours and I can't get it to do it. Even more mysterious is how abc163 got automatic edge coloring working starting below the root(??). Like How would I get it to use the "what's new" mind map as a template, but without all the pre-existing nodes? Where even is that file?
I try to open from template, browse up a few levels, and looked through every folder there in the freeplane appdata, but it doesn't exist.
I don't really know how to do conditional styles either, and probably never will, but are those predtermined by the template, or does the template over-ride them?
Instead of the old menu item there is a new drop-down box called "Automatic edge color" in the format panel in the "Node style" section.
Freeplane 1.5.x takes information about the edge colors from level styles beginning with level style 1.
All templates included in the freeplane distribution contain edge color definitions. The solution does not work with the old maps until the colors are added. I do not know how it could be fixed because I just do not know how I could do it in a transparent way.
Probably if Freeplane finds that map style does not have edge color information and it is required for automatic formatting it should display a ("don't ask me again") question about completting the styles with the edge colors. If the user accepts all level styles should be added edge colors, otherwise automatic edge coloring should be disable for map.
How do you think, which solution would be the best?
About the documentation: Freeplane is a community driven product. Currently nobody writes and updates freeplane documentation. I am only responding to questions in the forum. If you or somebody else could contribute missing documentation parts in the wiki or in teh freeplane tutorial maps I would deepy appreciate it.
1.6.0_23 alpha preview saves colors used for automatic edge coloring separately and allows to edit them in a handy dialog. You can test it in http://sourceforge.net/projects/freeplane/files/do%20not%20use%20me/
Because it is still alpha version the format of the saved data could change in the future.
Great! Trying it out right now! Some of the changes I'm seeing are terrific!
It has solved a couple of the problems I was having with 1.5, and even adds features I was asking for several years ago!
I see I can cusomize the available automatic edge colors, per map! I asked for that two years ago, and thought it had just been ignored!
Although... It's a bit of a pain having to manually add every single color, for Every single old map... It would be great if i could paste the same color set I use for all of them. But I won't complain! This change DOES make it so that I can migrate from 1.3 now!
Also, the annoying tab switching problem is now fixed! Hooray!
So, any word on when these features will be released on the stable build?