Free mind map editor with plug-ins for both NetBeans and Intellij
The Main part of a software project is not code but knowledge generated during the project. I guess knowledge is the main part of every business today and it is very important to move the generated knowledge from non-formal level to formal level to avoid its loss. There are many approaches to save knowledge and a mind map diagram is one of them. Also it is very important to keep the "distance" between project and its knowledge as short as possible and the ideal variant is to keep knowledge just within the project as a document set. If you use any external knowledge engineering tool then the distance already is not so short and for the cause I had decided to develop some plugin which would allow to form mind maps and keep knowledge graph just within projects and allow to work with the graphs just with the IDE.
Initially I developed a plugin for NetBeans IDE then the IntellijIDEA plugin was developed. I have a friend who is not from Java world but he also wanted to use the too so that Scia Reto editor was written.
1.6.7 (SNAPSHOT)
1.6.6 (11-feb-2024)
MMD Files
view panelJetBrains Mono Kawkab
and JetBrains Mono Vazir
) with Farsi char-set support #120
All parts of the application are written in Java and it needs Java 1.8+ for work.
The editor has three implementations
Just after first release for NetBeans IDE, Geertjan Wielenga created nice screen-cast which a bit out of date but still look good to understand common idea. It is very easy editor and the main set of operations look very intuitive, main questions from users I had about keyboard shortcuts but if keep in mind that TAB creates new mind map node and ENTER creates new sibling mode then life becomes much easier. It is a pop-up menu centric software so that all operations accessible through pop-up menu.
The Plugin keeps all mind map information in single UTF8 encoded plain text file formed in markdown compatible format, so the file can be easily read and interpret and without the plug-in.
Mind Map generated by NB MindMap plugin
> __version__=`1.1`
---
# Root <br/>topic
> topicLinkUID=`14F9D4CD31DA`
## First level
- LINK
<pre>http://www.google.com</pre>
### Item 1\.1
- NOTE
<pre>Some note for item 1.1</pre>
### Item 1\.2
- TOPIC
<pre>14F9D4CD31DA</pre>
In project tree just click mouse to activate pop-up menu for a folder and select in menu New->Mind map.
Mind map type is added as one more file type and can be found among file types in the Other.
Mind map type is registered as a file type which can be created through New pop-up menu for a folder.
Mind maps are opened in IDE as documents with graphic interface and the plugin doesn't add any new actions into IDE menu so all operations over mind maps you can make through the document pop-up menu. The Pop-up menu is formed for the current document state and context.
All manipulations over topic order and its position in the map hierarchy can be made only through mouse Drag&Drop operations (keep in mind that only one topic can be moved in the same time).
You can tune most of graphic parameters for mind map rendering through special panel Options. It can be activated through Options item of pop-up menu and through menu Edit->Preferences in the standalone version.
Today it is very important to have way to export data to another formats to use the knowledge in another tools. The Plug-in supports several formats to export data:
At present the editor allows to import main maps from many well-known mind map formats
Mainly you can keep short texts in your mind maps as topic names but sometime it is useful to keep and another information, the plugin allows to keep below listed information assets:
You can add and edit new topic content through the mind map pop-up menu and if you want remove some content then just open editor for the content and remove all text information.