Outlining and concept maps (Scapple, TheBrain, ConnectedText...)

Posted by 22111
Nov 12, 2013 at 11:57 PM

“And you’ll want Scapple to do all that, and still pay $14.99?”

Hugh, I take this for a rhetoric question, addressed to the general public; in such cases, I put the “you” into quotes to indicate that - as you know, I’m willing to pay for good software, in accordance to its value (and so, a price increase for Scapple would not be a problem if the features were there).

I’m quite amused you all throw yourself on the Scapple thing - I just mentioned it because it was there (since new in Windows, and mentioned here a month ago), and thus triggered my thinking of the need for perviousness between outliner and concept map, both ways.

And yes, deep hierarchy there would not be on my list (anymore) - I accept that “thinking process enhancement tools” like concept maps (but outliners are not such tools, that is also generally seen I think, and Steve said so some years ago here, and since he’s right, we need interoperability for our data between those two tools categories!) are useful for RESTRICTED sets of data.

But even with these limitations accepted, we’re speaking of several dozen of items, AND ARRANGED IN A CERTAIN WAY in that map, and then we want to do some “real work” upon those ideas, hence our import need to the outliner, and then, we want to REFINE our thinking process, but in the meanwhile, our work on that set of data, within our outliner, will have de-synched the map, and thus, a function that “memorizes” the previous state of the map when you RE-import that “same” = a similar set of data, from your outline again, would be of extreme usefulness: If you have to manually check print-outs of your map again and again, from possible re-arrangements, add-ons and deletions within your outliner, you will have a lot of (painful and unnecessary) work to do!

So, again, Scapples was just my starting point (but then, their writing software is quite elaborate and very friendly-priced, so perhaps a really good Scapple would only be 80$ instead of 400 MindJet would charge for it…).

But then, I mentioned CT, etc., which are not concept maps, but CT graphics especially would be of real interest here, since, in case, “you” ( ;- for the quotes) could use it for thinking, putting the meat to it, re-thinking… iteratively?

And TB as well? I never found a real-life use for it, but perhaps here’s a chance to make it really useful.

Of course, TB is quite hierarchical in the sense that independent items are quite new there and that their development has not gone very far, up to now, so I doubt it would be possible to have several strong, alternative “central points” (and their respective sub-webs) interacting with each other.

Similar for TC, but TC is said to be a wiki, not hierachical by design, so perhaps there are chances TC could do it better.

IF they can do it in some way, both programs would present those “visuals” “from within” - whilst on the other hand, I don’t know any concept mapper with an inbuilt “database”.

There is certainly “room”, open space to be filled by, and for such an integrative approach.

I know it’s very difficult to integrate concept maps and outlining, and so people endlessly try with mind mappers - but we all know that for thinking, mind mapper are NOT the thing, concept maps are. So some data translation should be made possible, half-automated, with SOME user interaction in the process.

As said, the mapper could identify new items by graphical identifiers like bolding, coloring or by other means, and it also could identify items that are NOT in the map anymore, judging from the “new” outliner/hierarchical data import, e.g. by totally thinning them, and/or by greying them out, black becoming light grey, etc.

Similar for renames: If the new element is in place of a deleted one, or even if it’s in the same sub-structure, the mapper could “ask” you if it is bound to replace the deleted one, and anyway: Every “NEW” element (really new, changed, displaced (judging from the tree), etc.) could be placed in some “waiting state” by the mapper, i.e. it would be “thinned”, so that you could easily and fast rearrange, by mouse, the element to that specific place within the map you want it be be.

Which means, the map is not a faithful graphical representation of the tree - this would be impossible -, but the map, on each iteration, would “remember” the previous state and do just the absolute minimum on it, by its own own means, but present you any changes in a way to enable you to quickly do the necessary changes yourself… which the mapper would then remember again for subsequent iterations…

Similar for the re-imports into the outliner: No overwriting of existant items (and their respective contents), but just careful indications - technically, that would be another problem, of the outliner in fact, which should be able to indicate (by bolding, underlining / coloring vs. thinning out / greying out / italicising): “This item is not present anymore in the new synch from mapper”; “That item has been added within the mapper” - and yes, in some cases, both represent one single, renamed item, for which you then will have some manual work to do.

All these - big - problems (and no, I don’t have the slightest idea about programming of graphics) strongly indicate the usefulness of a one-program solution that does both, serious data storage AND graphical, not-hierachical data representation.

I suppose many people will try to use such a “mapper” as sort of a “by-stander” to their data repository, but in the end, that’s a lot of “double work”, in the sense of manual “search”: Which element in the outliner is where in the map, and vice versa?

Which brings me to the idea that in the end, perhaps it’s “best” (= in the absence of an integrative solution, by it one-program, be it two programs working entrenched) to have a concept map (= NO mind-map) that (hopefully: easily!!!) permits systematic referencing single items in your outliner database (cf. the threads about cross-referencing outliner items), and then to not leave one element in your map without its link to the outliner - but that’s hard work, notwithstanding its being one-way linking only.

Btw, you’ve got a similar problem with Warnier designs, no software being able to synch between your design, and between your code repository; that’s one of the reasons why Warnier’s almost forgotten, when in fact, “together” with Yourdon, the honor to have buried spaghetti code for good, belongs to him. But that’s another story.