I always struggled with making mind maps because they just take to long to organize. I can outline/organize the world using OO, so why not take OO outlines and convert them thangs to mind maps? I’ve used software, like MindJet, that does the opposite. Anyone have any thoughts on this? I would use them if they were generated automatically from existing outlines.
Novamind’s mindmapping software has the ability to show a mind map and outline in the same window.
I think I saw Mindjet Mindmanager offer the ability to switch between outline and mind map views.
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i think if you’re already planning and organising your ideas with omnioutliner, it may be that you’re actually combining the mind-mapping/brainstorming stage with the refinement, organising, and planning stage of your projects already. i’ve always thought of mindmaps in the way that tony buzan (in books like ‘use your head etc.) outlines! them (sorry). it’s a way of unlocking ideas, knowledge and thoughts in an unordered way which can be organised and structured in a more formal and rigourous way later. omnioutliner can be used in a similar way - just empty your ideas into omnioutliner, and use its focussing and structuring tools to organise into a coherent whole later. mind-mapping offers a more visual and free-form way of doing this, for people who like to have an overview of ‘the big picture’ as it’s developing. but i know that i often feel more comfortable in the more linear approach of omnioutliner these days.
another piece of software which offers an even more free-form approach to mind-mapping is from 'literature and latte’ who make ‘scrivener’ this is called ‘scapple’ and is a wonderfully simple and feature-minimal piece of software.
just my thoughts fwiw.
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Hi!
I think that´s a great idea, and I don´t now if I interpret you right, but you can already to that if you save the file as an .opml.
Quite often for longer texts like a longer blogpost, a project outline or a article/book I start with the subjects in OO and free-write form, headlines and text there, then I open the file in Mindnode so I can see the ideas and gives me perspective. Then I edit and add things a little in Mindnode, open it again in OO and structure the text and free-write some more and so on, it let me go back and forward between mind mapping and outlining and I find that it helps a lot. Also when I have a quite good structure of the text I could then latter import it to scrivener.
Just use OPML and you can open in several apps - I use iThought
Also, OmniGraffle can open OmniOutliner files directly and produce something that looks like a mindmap (although not as nice a “real” mindmap program)
I didn´t know this, that´s really interesting. Thank you for the advice, sounds really convenient. How do you use the possibility to open OO files in OG except for mindmaps?
I don’t :D
I use OmniGraffle mostly for creating graphics for the slides I produce in Keynote. I use OmniOutliner for creating hierarchical lists and content outlines (which I then export to iThoughtsX)
Yep, cool one. Mindnode does this as well now, in its aesthetically pleasing way ;-)… of course, it imports opml and drag/dropping of selected rows as well…
