Well, you asked for crazy ideas....
| Project: | Freemind |
| Version: | HEAD |
| Component: | Code |
| Category: | feature request |
| Priority: | normal |
| Assigned: | Yorirou |
| Status: | active |
| Issue tags: | Freemind, taxonomy management |
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Before I had to give this project up for lack of time, I started trying to code an import from Freemind to Drupal. My idea was that you could use Freemind as a taxonomy modelling tool, which would work as follows:
a) Unload all or some of your sites vocabularies into Freemind (with associated node references)
b) Reorganise the taxonomy in Freemind
c) Load the taxonomy back, thus modifying both the taxonomy and the way in which associated nodes are referenced to the different categories.
My reasoning was that the taxonomy management in a web page is a real pain, very slow, and not very visual, whereas in Freemind you have a nice overview of the taxonomy and a drag-and-drop graphical tool for reorganising it.
And if you want to get really crazy then you could envisage a plugin for Freemind which would call Drupal directly, rather then having to go via a file import to update the taxonomy.
This is not a feature request exactly, but you did ask for crazy ideas....
#1
#2
That was my main reason why I started playing with the Drupal and Freemind integration thing.
The Freemind plugin and the Drupal backend is just a question of time. What adds the real complexity is the security.
I don't want to allow posting arbitary mm files for taxonomy. I have to track the changes. If I do synchronously then it will be more or less secure, but I lose the possibility of the offline work. The asynchronous way is more user friendly, but it can lead to collisions.
I need some time to figure out how to do this in a smart way, but I want to make it general, so every hierarchial stuff can use it (menu system, for example).
#3
Very cool! I look forward to being able to play with it! I did have the idea that Freemind module would have an "export" function and an "export for modification" function. The latter would somehow lock the taxonomy after export, until it came to importing. That way you make sure there is no change to the taxonomy which would be wiped out by the later import of the changed taxonomy. But I never got around to seeing how to do this. Perhaps one could use "taxonomy access"? Also, there is the problem of people adding nodes or modifying their classification while you are working on them. There is a "checkout module" which I actually started but which somebody else has taken over I'm happy to say, which locks nodes while people are working on them, that might have some ideas.
From the user point of view, I would prefer to hide the Drupal backend completely and do everything in Freeming. I see a use case scenario along the following lines:
I guess maybe you should have the possibility also to save your taxonomy locally from Freemind which allows you to keep working offline - I think the choice between offline and online working will depend very much on the state of the site. If it is under development then offline is good, on the other hand if it is live then you don't want to keep the content locked more than you must.
I think developing all that would be a pretty tall order (I would have to start by learning Java!), but I would love it as a user!
Also, you would have to be pretty strict on how you loaded the taxonomy back in because you could really screw things up if you got it wrong - that's why I intended to use only Drupal procedures for actually changing the taxonomy itself.
A few thoughts - I hope they might help