I saw a feature in another mind mapping application where it is possible to hide nodes.
So only the line from the parent to the node box is visible and there is a + sign to unhide it.
If there are 2 siblings nodes one can be hidden and the other visible.
I think this allows to show more of the relevant information for the moment, hiding nodes for example that have a lot of text and are not relevant to see right now.
Any thoughts? Could this be added in a future version?
Best regards,
Alexandre
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Hi, Alexander.
You can put a node with "..." and place the hidden nodes underneath.
The "..." doesn't bother visually, and you can place any number of hidden
nodes below it.
Many times, the tree structure itself contains solutions for many problems.
You could have your hidden thing, true, but it is more elegant to use the
tree we already have to serve the same purpose.
I saw a feature in another mind mapping application where it is possible
to hide nodes.
So only the line from the parent to the node box is visible and there is a
+ sign to unhide it.
If there are 2 siblings nodes one can be hidden and the other visible.
I think this allows to show more of the relevant information for the
moment, hiding nodes for example that have a lot of text and are not
relevant to see right now.
Any thoughts? Could this be added in a future version?
Yes it might work for most cases, good idea. But there may be case were for example we would want to keep the nodes at the same level, for scripts for example or for automatic formating or simply to have it at the same level.
Alexandre
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Yes. Not perfect. Just a compromise.
The thing is the community is trying to avoid new features for things that
can be done, more or less, with the existing tools.
Apparently, new users never get to learn so many minor features. They don't
find them. That is why I was suggesting this alternative. (That's what i
do. Intensive use of the tree structure. And yes, i hide nodes behind the
"..." myself.)
Yes it might work for most cases, good idea. But there may be case were
for example we would want to keep the nodes at the same level, for scripts
for example or for automatic formating or simply to have it at the same
level.
Maybe it could be put in the todo list for later, I think it might be
useful.
Maybe new users will not use it but after a while they may.
Also I think that one things that makes the feature hard to find is the
menu organization. But I don't know how to solve that. I think that a
ribbon bar could be something great for freeplane. Why wouldn't freeplane
start using a ribbon menu like docear:
Yes. Not perfect. Just a compromise.
The thing is the community is trying to avoid new features for things that
can be done, more or less, with the existing tools.
Apparently, new users never get to learn so many minor features. They don't
find them. That is why I was suggesting this alternative. (That's what i
do. Intensive use of the tree structure. And yes, i hide nodes behind the
"..." myself.)
Yes it might work for most cases, good idea. But there may be case were
for example we would want to keep the nodes at the same level, for scripts
for example or for automatic formating or simply to have it at the same
level.
Alexandre
You are doing something right: defending your proposal against criticism
(me). You are right not being shy about it. That's the whole purpose of
this community.
About ribbons, the issue has arisen in the past. I was clearly against it.
I do hate ribbons.
I think they take real state and are not clearer that the good'ol menus.
They seem better for people that are not that proficient with computers.
But, to be honest, that is not the target set of people for this software.
I kind of remember Dimitry got happy with this point of view and dropped
the idea. (Less work for him, and we are already happy with the menus.)
I would agree reorganization of the menus could be useful. But i don't
know. Difficult to tell for me, because i have known Freeplane for ages, i
can't tell what has to be made clearer. I'm just reminding people that we
have here established long ago that newbies get lost with the options of
this program. This idea is a consensus now. Dimitry himself reminds us
about it pretty often.
In short: I have nothing against your hiding nodes if you insist. I don't
see why you can't do it with my suggestion, but i don't mind new features.
On the other hand, i'm against the ribbons.
Good luck with your proposal, though.
If you would like to refer to this comment somewhere else in this project, copy and paste the following link:
The menu + the toolbars + F-bar and filter bar are taking already as much
space than the outlook ribbon bar. Also the outlook ribbon bar can be
collapsed leaving only the file menu.
The discussion was about newbies not finding features, also there was some
other discussion about how to make freeplane more accessible or used by
people vs marketing... but I think one issue could be simply that it
appears complex to new users. The ribon bar seems makes all features and
hidden features visible and seems to simplify apps, for example outlook or
word were the ribbon bars contain a lot of features.
You are doing something right: defending your proposal against criticism
(me). You are right not being shy about it. That's the whole purpose of
this community.
About ribbons, the issue has arisen in the past. I was clearly against it.
I do hate ribbons.
I think they take real state and are not clearer that the good'ol menus.
They seem better for people that are not that proficient with computers.
But, to be honest, that is not the target set of people for this software.
I kind of remember Dimitry got happy with this point of view and dropped
the idea. (Less work for him, and we are already happy with the menus.)
I would agree reorganization of the menus could be useful. But i don't
know. Difficult to tell for me, because i have known Freeplane for ages, i
can't tell what has to be made clearer. I'm just reminding people that we
have here established long ago that newbies get lost with the options of
this program. This idea is a consensus now. Dimitry himself reminds us
about it pretty often.
In short: I have nothing against your hiding nodes if you insist. I don't
see why you can't do it with my suggestion, but i don't mind new features.
On the other hand, i'm against the ribbons.
yes and no. Ribbons as in Office 2007+ take too much real-estate and show less features/options because you need quite big icons and space between them, what kind of limits you in amount of displayed icons/features. You can put all the icons on smaller real-estate but then you'll have the contradiction: especially newbies, no one will find anything. Splitting each main function onto "ribbon-tabs" and having more functions displayed on the ribbon may also be overwhelming for the user.
And, what to do and how to resort the icons when you work with a mid-sized window instead of full screen?
I had proposed to expose every property of a node for scripting (read/write-able).
x-y Position, visibility, dimensions. But no answer.
So you can help yourself by changing the dimensions of your node to smallest possible size and changing the text/background/edge colors to background-color by scripting. May be its even not necessary to change sizes. The connection lines can also be "removed" by setting their color to the background. I'n not sure anymore, haven't used freeplane in a while.
Easiest way is to define a new style for that and switch styles with script; I believe...
rgds
tony
If you would like to refer to this comment somewhere else in this project, copy and paste the following link:
The discussion was about newbies not finding features, also there was some
other discussion about how to make freeplane more accessible or used by
people vs marketing... but I think one issue could be simply that it
appears complex to new users.
I disagree that Freeplane, or any software, APPEARS complex to new users,
unless they have been brainwashed by the Big Name Vendors who have instilled a
lack of initiative and negative learning attitude.
I get a new piece of software the first thing I do is a step-and-repeat through
the menu bar to see what's there, so see what the functions are.
I take notes. Yes, I write things down on a piece of papers; things to
investigate, things to look up, things to explore, things to experiment with. I
know that I am one of the vast multitude that 'learn by doing' and these notes
mean that my 'doing' is guided, structured, by these notes, rather than a
random, unstructured "drunkards walk'.
If there is manual or some kind of how-to, a learning example, in some cases a
'code example' or similar that I can work though, that's great. I do that.
then I do it again with variations to see what effect that has.
I HATE* the dumbed down user interfaces that assume the user has no
intuitive, needs all functions available, visible at the top level, is unwilling
to spend time learning, unwilling to experiment. Get real: a four-year old
child is not stupid hand has plenty of curiosity and enjoys learning. saying
you design simple UIs that even a child could understand is an insult to childhood!
I LIKE learning!
So, what's wrong with the Freeplane menu system?
What's wrong is that the Freeplane code base isn't as gigantic as, say,
OpenOffice, where you can rearrange the menu-bar indefinitely, the position of
the icons and options, what appears in each option group on the
menu-bar/icon-bar. What's wrong with Freeplane is that it is the coherent
vision of one guy, Dimitry, who can choose what to implement or not implement,
rather than the "by committee" design of something like OpenOffice. (If you
haven't read Brooks and others on the coherence of a design by a single
architect, then please do before entering an argument about it.) What's wrong
with Freeplane is that it's free, that Dimity isn't paid for the development and
support of Freeplane as a full-time job that he can make a lining doing.
Many of the complaints people seem to have about Freeplane can be rectified by
going an purchasing something like XMindPro, MindJet's once excellent product,
others. Some of those suck closely at the Microsoft or the Apple teat, s
closely, I sometimes think, that there is something more to the relationship.
I'm a Linux user; I use quite a number of 3rd party products, that use Java.
I do this not because I'm mean or cheap or my middle name is 'Scrooge', but
because so many of these are actually excellent pieces of software. So many of
them are like Freeplane, the coherent vision of one one architect. We used to
have that with a lot of software for the PC, back in the 1980s and 1990s, before
it all became Big Business and the bean counters took over. Personally I think
the visibility and support that Dimity gives with Freeplane beat out many of the
products that charge $$$ and give erroneous documentation and unresponsive
support. (You know who I mean!) I just wish that I could finance some of these
projects.
Please, contribute what you can.
If you would like to refer to this comment somewhere else in this project, copy and paste the following link:
One of the advantages of the hidden node is that when colapsing and expanding all nodes these will stay hidden. It works like that on the other mapping tool i tried.
If you would like to refer to this comment somewhere else in this project, copy and paste the following link:
Hi,
I saw a feature in another mind mapping application where it is possible to hide nodes.
So only the line from the parent to the node box is visible and there is a + sign to unhide it.
If there are 2 siblings nodes one can be hidden and the other visible.
I think this allows to show more of the relevant information for the moment, hiding nodes for example that have a lot of text and are not relevant to see right now.
Any thoughts? Could this be added in a future version?
Best regards,
Alexandre
Hi, Alexander.
You can put a node with "..." and place the hidden nodes underneath.
The "..." doesn't bother visually, and you can place any number of hidden
nodes below it.
Many times, the tree structure itself contains solutions for many problems.
You could have your hidden thing, true, but it is more elegant to use the
tree we already have to serve the same purpose.
2017-05-25 10:56 GMT+02:00 Alexandre alexandreviau77@users.sf.net:
Hi Miguel,
Yes it might work for most cases, good idea. But there may be case were for example we would want to keep the nodes at the same level, for scripts for example or for automatic formating or simply to have it at the same level.
Alexandre
Yes. Not perfect. Just a compromise.
The thing is the community is trying to avoid new features for things that
can be done, more or less, with the existing tools.
Apparently, new users never get to learn so many minor features. They don't
find them. That is why I was suggesting this alternative. (That's what i
do. Intensive use of the tree structure. And yes, i hide nodes behind the
"..." myself.)
2017-05-26 10:28 GMT+02:00 Alexandre alexandreviau77@users.sf.net:
Maybe it could be put in the todo list for later, I think it might be
useful.
Maybe new users will not use it but after a while they may.
Also I think that one things that makes the feature hard to find is the
menu organization. But I don't know how to solve that. I think that a
ribbon bar could be something great for freeplane. Why wouldn't freeplane
start using a ribbon menu like docear:
[image: pasted2]
[image: pasted1]
Le ven. 26 mai 2017 à 11:41, Miguel Boyer pilominco@users.sf.net a écrit :
Alexandre:
You are doing something right: defending your proposal against criticism
(me). You are right not being shy about it. That's the whole purpose of
this community.
About ribbons, the issue has arisen in the past. I was clearly against it.
I do hate ribbons.
I think they take real state and are not clearer that the good'ol menus.
They seem better for people that are not that proficient with computers.
But, to be honest, that is not the target set of people for this software.
I kind of remember Dimitry got happy with this point of view and dropped
the idea. (Less work for him, and we are already happy with the menus.)
I would agree reorganization of the menus could be useful. But i don't
know. Difficult to tell for me, because i have known Freeplane for ages, i
can't tell what has to be made clearer. I'm just reminding people that we
have here established long ago that newbies get lost with the options of
this program. This idea is a consensus now. Dimitry himself reminds us
about it pretty often.
In short: I have nothing against your hiding nodes if you insist. I don't
see why you can't do it with my suggestion, but i don't mind new features.
On the other hand, i'm against the ribbons.
Good luck with your proposal, though.
The menu + the toolbars + F-bar and filter bar are taking already as much
space than the outlook ribbon bar. Also the outlook ribbon bar can be
collapsed leaving only the file menu.
The discussion was about newbies not finding features, also there was some
other discussion about how to make freeplane more accessible or used by
people vs marketing... but I think one issue could be simply that it
appears complex to new users. The ribon bar seems makes all features and
hidden features visible and seems to simplify apps, for example outlook or
word were the ribbon bars contain a lot of features.
Best regards,
Alexandre
Le ven. 26 mai 2017 à 13:52, Miguel Boyer pilominco@users.sf.net a écrit :
Hi Alexandre,
yes and no. Ribbons as in Office 2007+ take too much real-estate and show less features/options because you need quite big icons and space between them, what kind of limits you in amount of displayed icons/features. You can put all the icons on smaller real-estate but then you'll have the contradiction: especially newbies, no one will find anything. Splitting each main function onto "ribbon-tabs" and having more functions displayed on the ribbon may also be overwhelming for the user.
And, what to do and how to resort the icons when you work with a mid-sized window instead of full screen?
I had proposed to expose every property of a node for scripting (read/write-able).
x-y Position, visibility, dimensions. But no answer.
So you can help yourself by changing the dimensions of your node to smallest possible size and changing the text/background/edge colors to background-color by scripting. May be its even not necessary to change sizes. The connection lines can also be "removed" by setting their color to the background. I'n not sure anymore, haven't used freeplane in a while.
Easiest way is to define a new style for that and switch styles with script; I believe...
rgds
tony
On 26/05/17 07:04 AM, Alexandre wrote:
I disagree that Freeplane, or any software, APPEARS complex to new users,
unless they have been brainwashed by the Big Name Vendors who have instilled a
lack of initiative and negative learning attitude.
I get a new piece of software the first thing I do is a step-and-repeat through
the menu bar to see what's there, so see what the functions are.
I take notes. Yes, I write things down on a piece of papers; things to
investigate, things to look up, things to explore, things to experiment with. I
know that I am one of the vast multitude that 'learn by doing' and these notes
mean that my 'doing' is guided, structured, by these notes, rather than a
random, unstructured "drunkards walk'.
If there is manual or some kind of how-to, a learning example, in some cases a
'code example' or similar that I can work though, that's great. I do that.
then I do it again with variations to see what effect that has.
I HATE* the dumbed down user interfaces that assume the user has no
intuitive, needs all functions available, visible at the top level, is unwilling
to spend time learning, unwilling to experiment. Get real: a four-year old
child is not stupid hand has plenty of curiosity and enjoys learning. saying
you design simple UIs that even a child could understand is an insult to childhood!
I LIKE learning!
So, what's wrong with the Freeplane menu system?
What's wrong is that the Freeplane code base isn't as gigantic as, say,
OpenOffice, where you can rearrange the menu-bar indefinitely, the position of
the icons and options, what appears in each option group on the
menu-bar/icon-bar. What's wrong with Freeplane is that it is the coherent
vision of one guy, Dimitry, who can choose what to implement or not implement,
rather than the "by committee" design of something like OpenOffice. (If you
haven't read Brooks and others on the coherence of a design by a single
architect, then please do before entering an argument about it.) What's wrong
with Freeplane is that it's free, that Dimity isn't paid for the development and
support of Freeplane as a full-time job that he can make a lining doing.
Many of the complaints people seem to have about Freeplane can be rectified by
going an purchasing something like XMindPro, MindJet's once excellent product,
others. Some of those suck closely at the Microsoft or the Apple teat, s
closely, I sometimes think, that there is something more to the relationship.
I'm a Linux user; I use quite a number of 3rd party products, that use Java.
I do this not because I'm mean or cheap or my middle name is 'Scrooge', but
because so many of these are actually excellent pieces of software. So many of
them are like Freeplane, the coherent vision of one one architect. We used to
have that with a lot of software for the PC, back in the 1980s and 1990s, before
it all became Big Business and the bean counters took over. Personally I think
the visibility and support that Dimity gives with Freeplane beat out many of the
products that charge $$$ and give erroneous documentation and unresponsive
support. (You know who I mean!) I just wish that I could finance some of these
projects.
Please, contribute what you can.
One of the advantages of the hidden node is that when colapsing and expanding all nodes these will stay hidden. It works like that on the other mapping tool i tried.