Note Taking in Freeplane (a consultant's solution to managing information sources within a project) 

Awww! Thank you so much for the kind words! Happy that I could be of service all these many years later!

Hope it works well for you. I personally will never go back to other solutions! At long last I'm able to make real use of knowledge collected while in meetings (which, sadly, is often otherwise lost or forgotten within a couple of months of the expensive meeting.

Hi Mickey! Thanks for the kind comments. Listen, you have my admiration, given that you are a Docear guru--I tried using it a couple of times and quickly learned that there are just enough differences between the two that I decided I best stick with what I know! Sorta like trying to speak a foreign language--you know what want to say, but can't think of how to make it happen! And, because I'm not a researcher, a lot of Docear was like a foreign language! But I did the same thing it sounds like you're going to do--take the ideas and figure out how to make them work in what's familiar and works otherwise. I've taken some of the research ideas I saw in Docear and incorporated my own simpler bibliographic variants in FP . That's what makes FP so very powerful! It is endlessly adaptable for just about any need a person can come up with. Best of luck and kindest regards, Q!

Bill McDonald Oh, of course! Your video has transformed my work, so many, many thanks. And, I totally concur: Sometimes switching is not worth the trouble. I have a question (I apologize for the length) and am hoping you can steer me to help or provide insight: I made a script to take all of a node's children's text and place their text, one by one, into the parent node's attribute table. I wrote a simple little one after studying sample Groovy code (maybe one already exists natively?). The script works GREAT when based/residing in each node but not when I try to rend the script a menu-driven script. Is there something I need to change in the script when I try to move it from being a node-based script to being a menu-residing script? Regarding the extension of the file containing my script: Must it be a .groovy, or can it be a .txt or a .xml (I'm using a .groovy extension)? Do I need to set the parent directory or something? The ScriptingEngine.xml file is parsed fine either until it tries to call up the location of the script OR once FreeMind is executing the script: one or the other. And when I modify the ScriptingEngine.xml file, the script editor and evaluate option disappear from FreeMind's menu. Any advice? Should I try to get Docear to play with Freeplane instead of FreeMind, do you think? Thank you for ANY help by the way, and godspeed with your endeavors. NOTE: I wrote the script for FreeMind because Docear plays nice with FreeMind.

Bill McDonald Update: I went ahead and obtained Freeplane and started fiddling with it. I think that's going to be my fix -- moving, for this, project from FreeMind to Freeplane since I'm finding the script creating process more intuitive for me in Freeplane. Take care! Thanks again for starting me on this pathway. I am SO elated about my project now that it's taken this turn with mind mapping. Who knew?!! :)

Still there July 2020

Ruben, I'm glad the approach appeals to you. The scripts are in this public google folder. Please feel free to use them as best suits your needs. Thanks for the kind remarks. drive.google.com/drive/folders/0B6YeVh2dVLXga2wwS3prT3paQk0?usp=sharing

Thanks for the suggestion. I tweaked the title to try and incorporate your proposed wording...

You are a super-bright guy. Have you tuned into David Allen's stuff (GTD)? I can throw out my "how to be a consultant" books based on this 45 minute lecture at Google (2007). It seems to me his stuff is a built-in motivation for perpetually indecisive clients. I think you'll dig this lecture.

Several people have asked me about sharing scripts and I've not been very responsive, simply because I'm not sure how best to do this in a way that would make sense to somebody who was aiming to modify my approach to suit their own purposes. Couple of problems I'm wrestling with: 1. Groovy language. Unless you spend a little time with this structured language, it's hard to know how to tweak my spaghetti to do what you want it to do. I'm not a programmer either, and I suspect that my applications are very badly structured from a trained programmer's perspective. Sorta like the difference between a butcher and a surgeon: We both cut, but I'm using a cleaver and the real pro uses a scalpel. 2. Interconnectedness of the piece parts. Some of my solutions involve a groovy script that contains application-specific information "hard coded" into the script. Other parts of the solution involve native features of Freeplane reacting to changes made by my script (for example, a FP feature called conditional styles is used to set the look a feel of a particular node based on the value of attribute values set by the script). In order to make the whole package work, it is necessary to set these relationships within the script AND FP native features to work together. It's not something that exists within a single script that I can share--that's only half the problem. The other part of the application requires that complementary settings within FP be made or the thing won't work correctly as a unit. How to share that is where I always get stumped. My intent in demonstrating the capability was more about showing how FP could be harnessed to solve specific problems. I'm not really sure how to move from the general intent to specific questions about how to implement a similar solution in a way that wouldn't frustrate and perhaps destroy emerging interest in the very fine (but eclectic) software application known as Freeplane.

Darin, I've just created a public folder on my google drive account and uploaded the 4 scripts that I reference in this video. Of course, these are offered "as is," and very much conditioned on the cautions/concerns defined/discussed above. Here's the link: drive.google.com/folderview id=0B6YeVh2dVLXga2wwS3prT3paQk0&usp=sharing Good luck! Be sure and share what you discover! We're all learning here! Q!

Bill McDonald Hi Bill, Sadly your download link dosn't work. Seems it is already long ago...... Is there a chance to get your work anymore? I think this would help me to learn and understand about Freeplane. Thanks a lot. Stephan

St Mc Here's the link. I just went a refreshed it, so it should work, but it's the same as what I posted earlier. As I look to the message above, the URL was truncated, so perhaps you didn't get the entire thing? drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B6YeVh2dVLXga2wwS3prT3paQk0&usp=sharing

Very cool ! The link works and 4 scripts are available. Did you also shared the example with the templates ? Thanks.