A few hours left for Flying Logic Pro sale

Posted by Hugh
Jan 16, 2010 at 06:53 PM

It is indeed an interesting programme. I have come across few other applications that are directly comparable, although some mindmapping programmes appear to approach its functionality increasingly closely.

I haven’t used it for a while but when I did, its main value for me was to create large linear-flow charts of multi-threaded writing outlines, relating events to time. When I first used it there were no timeline applications that could properly do this. A strength of the programme for me was that it animates and sorts out an acceptable geometric relationship between the nodes and connections on the screen, even if they are initially tangled and complex. There is some discussion of this usage in the website’s forum, where a novelist details his experience in using FL for plotting.

The programme itself is designed primarily to brainstorm, represent and assist in decision-making using process and other kinds of specialised logic networks, and its functionality is heavily weighted towards those purposes. I have never worked through those feature sets because I’ve never needed them, but I am sure they would be useful to specialists in such fields. Beyond this, if you need to create complicated charts or flow-diagrams with nodes and connections that are not necessarily in the shape of a classic mindmap or organagram, then Flying Logic may well be worth looking at.

As of version 1.1, it exports text to OPML. It is written in Java, which is not to everybody’s liking, but that enables charts to work interchangeably on Windows and Macs and provides the animated UI mentioned above. Very big charts slowed it down somewhat, but that may have been because my concepts were too fussy…