MM/LX - Mind Mapping
Did you try to click on items in map above? Go ahead, it won't bite :-)
| "Great minds map alike!"
- Andreas Garzotto, the author of MM/LX
"I started using MM/LX in my work back in version 0.2, early in the development, and it has been in use since then!" - Helmuth Guenther, D&A Software Beta Team Member |
We are proud to present MindMap/LX (MM/LX) the newest program by Andreas Garzotto. This program implements mind mapping techniques on the HP Palmtop.
In 2004, a brilliant programmer from Germany, Daniel Hertrich, came aboard and took on the good work begun by Andreas. The recent Release 3 of MM/LX is a great work by Daniel, and I am happy to see him apply his technical skills and deep insights into this highly sophisticated program. Daniel, thank you many times for the excellent work you are doing. (I also know of some of the other development Daniel is "cooking up" and I think we'll have some fun here! ...)
You can download the program and try it out. The program is freeware and can be used on any HP 200LX palmtop and with the help of Palrun or PalmPC.COM or CG.COM on any DOS or Windows PC, but note that we can support and help you resolve problems only on the HP 100/200LX platform.
Original Release date: June 30, 2001
As of 15 November 2001, MindMap/LX (MM/LX) is COPYRIGHTED FREEWARE
Available only from D&A Software
The technique itself is about as old as humans have been using their minds! In one form or another it has been used for ... well always. People have always needed some way to record their ideas and organize them. The proliferation of writing added a useful tool. There are historical records from the middle ages where mind maps were recorded.
(Added 10 April 2002)
Here is an interesting item sent by a customer
(Thank you Andrew!). The full size image is approx 428K. It
is a picture of an article from the Ann Arbor News, April 8,
2002 talking about mindmapping being taught to students at a
local high school, Willow Run.
So what is it? It is a way to organize the details of an idea, or a thought. For example: Think of lunch. Within that high level summary idea, you can break it up to location, company, appetizer, main dish, dessert, how to pay. Take main dish. You feel today like a vegetarian dish. That can be salad, or an omlette, or even a crepe perhaps.
So far we organized this lunch thought as follows:
Many of us use the form of the list above as a mind map of sorts. If you use PE - PalEdit, our freeware Editor, you may well be familiar with its Outline facility which implements a structure like the above.
A more effective map uses a visual organization of ideas. The technique was formally described and defined in the work of Tony Buzan several decades ago (1960s). MindMap/LX implements a similar concept to visualize a hierarchy of ideas and thoughts.
Mind mapping is a method of visualizing ideas and thoughts in a way similar to what our brain does when it organizes such material. Using these techniques to map your thoughts and ideas tends to reveal aspects unseen before, as well as increase the creativity. And yet, most people report an increased retention of much larger "chunks" of information and data, with improved recall of the material, and a deeper understanding of the data.
Here is a picture of the same Lunch idea in MM/LX:
Notice the "+" character to the right of "Vegetarian"? It means that there are more items hidden below item "vegetarian". Pressing ALT-H toggles between hiding and revealing all the levels below the highlighted one (level 3 in this case). Look at the picture now after the ALT-H was pressed:
Of course you can set up the hide/reveal level to your liking. ALT-C opens a prompt box where you enter the level number. Here is what the screen looks like after ATL-C with 2:
"Vegetarian" and its siblings (items in the same level) are completely hidden inside "Main Dish", which now shows the "+" character on the right side.
You can manipulate each "branch" as its own entity - copy it to the clipboard, duplicate it elswhere, remove it from one spot and "graft" it on another branch in another location, where the idea fragment fits better.
If you take meeting notes, MM/LX is an excellent tool, allowing you to keep track of several meetings in one file, even keep the notes as separate mindmaps within the same physical file. There is even a template facility to ease the creation of similar mind maps to keep notes for each meeting.
Another usage: Travel log - complete with links to pictures (maps or pictures to record the visited places), routes, hotel information, you name it.
And more:
You already saw some of the features in the document above. But there is more! Many features are of course built-in, you now have a tiny taste of the features and uses. To get the full taste of the power of this program, please download it, install it, and use it!
D&A Software and our Beta Team encountered a difficult time when trying to
define what we thought were the 5 or 6 most favorite or outstanding features
of MM/LX. Finally, we settled on the following list:
- Links to other mindmaps and other files from each item
- Notes attachable for each item
- Integrates with PE's outline feature
- Managing multiple maps in one file
- Flexible rearrangement of maps (incl. cuting a branch from
one map and inserting it in a different map)
- Export to HTML (in outline format)
- Support for templates (and automatic template generation)
Version 3 adds A LOT of HTML export features to allow enhanced
formatting and report generation. Give it a try!
Of course, your list of outstanding features may be different, once you
begin to use the program!
We used the exporting feature to demonstrate how well MM/LX can communicate your thoughts and ideas to others. We enabled this product to export the mindmap to HTML. We felt this was an important feature to communicate your mindmap to colleagues, friends, co-workers, customer, and others - in printed form or directly on the World Wide Web.
What we did: We exported, on the HP 200LX, in about 5-10 seconds, the entire HELP File of MindMap/LX. This contains the entire information which is on the help file when you press F1 in MM/LX! We then uploaded the HTML file - AS IS, UNEDITED - to the Website. click here to see it - and to see the many features of the MM/LX program.
It must be clear to you by now that we trust our own product to be effective enough to help us in marketing itself! :->
Subject: MM/LX to MS Word To: info@dasoft.com From: "Yves Leurquin" [email address removed] Date: Wed, 15 May 2002 10:20:24 +0200 Dear Avi, Here attached is the MS Macro. It is my first MS Macro and is not very nice as the same could be done with a much shorter While/EndWhile loop. However it does the job pretty well and is an invaluable help to me. Instructions: 1. Cut and paste the macro text (see the attached "MSWord_Struct_Eng.txt") into the MS Word Macro window 2. Cut and paste the MM/LX document (for example "MEETING.MM" in the MS Word document window) 3. Execute the Macro (Alt+F8) Alternatively, the included MSWord document already has the macro and should word right out of the box. The macro is specific to the English version of MS Word. On my German version of MS Word I had to replace all occurences of "^p" with "^a" and "Heading" with "Überschrift" Feel free to post it on your website and thanks again for releasing MM/LX. Regards, Yves Leurquin [email address removed](See attached file MMLXtoWord.zip)
