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"Note taking with mind maps"
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Posted by satis
Mar 30, 2018 at 07:08 PM
Interesting February article on the benefits of mind maps from the founder of Biggerplate:
https://blog.biggerplate.com/note-taking-with-mind-maps-fa4b73da3665
It’s generally a good overview but the note examples are all a line or so long, which hazes over an issue I have with mind maps - since I usually enter much longer notes or quotes to my outlines, with them often becoming notes as well as first drafts for writing I do elsewhere, large amounts of text can overwhelm the viewing space of mind mapping apps.
Posted by Paul Korm
Mar 30, 2018 at 08:50 PM
I like iThoughts for this—both Mac and Windows—since there is a panel above the map for text associated with a mind map node. The text panel can take up as much of the screen as one wants, and accepts markdown.
The text panel is visible in this image
Posted by satis
Mar 31, 2018 at 02:35 AM
Paul Korm wrote:
>I like iThoughts for this—both Mac and Windows—since there is a
>panel above the map for text associated with a mind map node.
I own iThoughtsX but didn’t get the iOS version because I felt that the text handling was subpar for my needs, and I don’t really use the app on my Mac either.
With iThoughtsX the only way you know a node has notes associated with it is by scanning for a little-bitty icon by it, so each node itself must functionally be a header, not a note itself. That is, you can’t just be writing, create a sub-node idea and continue to write long paragraphs like you can in an outliner - you need to stop to think of a name for the node, then start writing in a file container (being able to use Markdown and add images is admittedly nice) that lives in a constrained horizontal box with limited vertical space that’s not too comfortable to write in or see what you’re writing (without having to repeatedly resize on screen).
Screenshot: https://cl.ly/220G1m0l273t
I’d like to have my mind map app let me have the option to write in each node as if it were a separate Pages/GoogleDoc/Markdown sheet and when I finish the node shrinks and shows the first line or two of the writing alongside something like a big ‘...’ icon to show (if it’s not obvious) that there’s more inside the node.
MindNode is a somewhat cleaner option for me, even if it can look ungainly when zoomed out.
( From https://abramkj.com/2015/07/21/mindnode-omnioutliner-quite-a-combo/ )
https://abramkj.files.wordpress.com/2015/07/david-and-bathsheba-mind-map.png
The bare bones outline view in MindNode is somewhat useful.
https://abramkj.files.wordpress.com/2015/07/mind-map-with-outline.png
And the OPML output/input (of both iThoughtsX and MindNode) makes it useful when I need to work in a more powerful outlining environment.
https://abramkj.files.wordpress.com/2015/07/outline-in-omnioutliner.png
Posted by doablesoftware
Apr 6, 2018 at 12:06 AM
yea that’s one of the things i’ve tried to do: take notes with mind map or mapping type of sofware
i haven’t found them to be helpful tho would love to see collections of use cases and how they helped the user
Posted by Dellu
Apr 6, 2018 at 02:06 AM
The very idea of NODE is what makes mindmapping apps less functional. Thinking about one core idea; I am just stuck there unless I am working on clearly hierarchal stuff (often less often). Relationship between ideas come very latter as I think about it hard.
Scapple is much useful to just run ideas around; never worrying about the topic (node/title).