The Mindjet Labs

There are a number of reasons why writing a MindManager Add-in can be useful.  Most obvious is the desire for intimate control over user interaction, and the ability to manipulate some external system using map data as a guide.

Creating an Add-in begins with the IDTExtensibility2 interface.  MindManager loosely follows the same Add-In model seen in Microsoft Office and the Visual Studio 2005 IDE.  Like those applications, MindManager 7, given the correct registry settings, will load a COM object and obtain an IDTExtensibility interface to that instance.  There are 5 methods on this interface.  These have an event handler feel to them, used to manage the lifecycle of the Add-in component.

But like most extension efforts, the depth of functionality in an Add-in depends in part on both the MindManager object model and the developer's familiarity with the application itself.  MindManager knowledge is built by using the application, but the object model is what it is.  One way to deal with it is to learn what it can do.

In this spirit, I wrote a MindManager Add-in Sample.  In one form or another, this code has been on my drive for months.  This has been a form of sandbox, allowing experimentation with MindManager without cluttering up other projects. The release of MindManager 7 kicked this sample into a corner for a while, but I eventually revisited the subject.  After a number of "gee, I should finish this" moments, I finally cleaned it up and added enough documentation to make it intelligable.

This sample factors common behaviors into a utility DLL and implements a sample add-in using these utilities.  I tried to exercise the range of UI integration mechanisms available.  The list below illustrates the current crop.  Remember, most of this is illustrative in nature. 

• Ribbon Tabs, Groups - add one Tab to the Fluent UI ribbon, and place a group on that tab
  
• Menu Commands - add one sample menu item to each stock MindManager menu. Note how the MindManger 7 host handles the deprecated menu identifiers.
  
• CommandBar Buttons - add a sample button to each command bar made available by the MindManager host. Note how the MindManger 7 host handles the deprecated command bar identifiers.
  
• Add-in Defined Command Bar - add a custom CommandBar with a button and a menu to the MindManager user interface. Note how the MindManger 7 host handles the deprecated command bar UI widget.
  
• Add-in Defined Menu - create a menu instance and cache it for later tear-down.
  
• Event Handlers - create SaveEventHandler and ViewChangeEventHandler instances to catch specific events fired by the host.
  
• Sample Task Pane - load an icon for the taskpane, then create a sample TaskPane instance
  
• Sample Option Pane - create an OptionPane instance.
  
• Sample Business Type - register a URI and create an associated MmxSampleBusinessType instance for it.
  
• Sample Control Strip - load an Icon, register the MmxSampleControlStrip type with MindManager, create a reference to the DocumentStatsCommand, and populate a context menu for the ControlStrip.

For example, this sample adds a menu item to all the available MindManager dynamic menus, including those deprecated in MindManager 7.  The main UI behavior I was unable to demonstrate was the popup KeyTips in the Ribbon.  While the ribbon tab created by the add-in responds to the ALT+S key, the individual menu items in the group are not available through the keyboard.  I don't know why.

Since the Downloads section of this site doesn't have a distinct Add-in section, I attached the sample to this blog post as a .ZIP archive.  This archive file includes the Add-in VS.Net 2005 solution containing three projects: MmxSample, Mmx Utility, and an installation.  The source code for the project is included, as is a .CHM documentation file generated from the XML  tags using the Microsoft SandCastle tools.  The most excellent SandCastle Help File Builder was very useful in generating the docs.  

The simplest thing to do with this sample is to download the zip file, expand it to a working directory, and open the solution with VS.Net 2005. The help file for the sample, Mm7Sample.chm, can be found in the MmxSample\collateral\Help folder.  As time, energy and reader intrest permits, I may write additional posts discussing the details. 

In any event, here's something I wish I had when I first looked at the MindManager object model - a working MindManager Add-in sample.

So I started to think about how to write coherently about creating a C# MindManager 7 Add-in sample.  While the MindManager Add-in model loosely follows that seen in Visual Studio and the Microsoft Office products, there are a number of areas specific to MindManager.

I began with creating the attached map.  But it's sometimes useful to use a narrative theme, something to tie together the various pieces into a cohesive whole.  So why not use the MM7 Add-in wizard template as a starting point, and go from there?

Well, to put it bluntly, the MindJet Add-in wizard doesn't buy you much.

True, you do get a Connector class that implements the IDTExtensibility interface.  And the wizard generates a small Utility class that has a few useful methods. The generated code does compile, rudimentary comments are included in extractable markup, and the correct .NET CLR attributes are placed on the Connector class to make it visible to COM application and define a ProdID.

Probably the most useful thing the wizard does is create a Setup project that carries the Windows Registry settings needed to let the MindManager application locate the Add-in component at load-time.  These settings are used by MindManager to discover and load selected Add-in components.  If they are wrong, your Add-in never makes  it onto the available Add-ins list.

But all this stuff is small potatoes given the work remaining to implement the Add-in and make the wizard-generated code useful.

All the Utility member methods are static, there is no need to create an instance of this type, but MindJet.Utility class carries an unneeded constructor anyway.  And this Utility class is also sealed, so you can't derive from it.  Any changes you make to the source will reside in the MindJet.Utility namespace and only in that namespace.  Since Utility.cs is a C# source file in the generated Add-in project, you'll need to use the cut-and-paste wizard to use your enhancements elsewhere.

The responses you provide to the wizard are used to create a stubbed out Extensibility.IDTExtensibility2 implementation in a class called Connector, but this is pretty simple to do manually.  Derive a class from an interface, and Visual Studio will stub out the methods with "Not Implemented" method bodies on demand.

However, the wizard-generated code does place try-catch blocks in the method bodies of the Connector type, passing control to MindJet.Utility.ShowError() method in the catch block. This may seem like a good thing, but on further inspection it turns out more work is needed to reach a useful implementation.  While Utility.HandleError() puts up a MessageBox(), it doesn't throw an exception itself, so there's no help in implementing a useful exception handling scheme. Rather, an exception passed to Utility.ShowError() in a catch block is just shown in all its cryptic glory to the user, and then dropped on the floor.

A better scheme would provide a MindJet.Exception class definition and use that to log exception instance details, then throw them to an outer catch block or the .Net runtime itself.  Such an implementation could be used to as a base class in creating additional Exception classes specific to the Add-in itself.

Given the number of things possible in a MindManager Add-in, I sort of expected base classes to help with command/event handling, Task Pane creation and perhaps the Options dialog or some code sample that dealt wth the Ribbon/Tab/Group parts of the UI .  None of that is present.  Nor is there any demonstration of the MindJet object model or the use of markup technology, two useful parts of the MindManager software solution platform.

Finally, I have a basic distrust of wizards, learned through scars acquired in the early C++ Microsoft Foundation Class (MFC) days.  I'd rather know what the code is doing than blindly trust a wizard.  If there is not enough bang for the investment in understanding the wizard output, let's cut to the chase and drop the wizard altogether.

So I'll keep going with my hand-rolled sample and not sweat the MM7 Add-in Wizard Template.  Just about everything I want to talk about has to be done anyway, regardless of the starting point.  You can start with the generated output from the MM7 Wizard, or with an empty file in a text editor and get to the same place.

In an imperfect world, even perfection is flawed.  Which you would think might make me feel a little better after rereading my last File Explorer Map Part post, but that turned out to be only true in part.  What did make me feel better was compiling a list of further extensions and enhancements to the File Explorer Map Part.

Here's a fast bullet point summary of things that could be done to the File Explorer Map Part, with an eye to making it more flexible:

• Let the user adjust the Skip List - There's a hard coded set of file name specifications (*.exe, *.dll and the like) to ignore when generating file system topic content in the Refresh.mmbas. script. Would be nice to keep this as a default and let the user add or remove additional specifications.
  
• Let the user choose to always use the maximum possible folder depth - a persistent option to always expand the map part sub tree might be useful, but this expansion can be slow in the current implementation, particularly for deep file/folder hierarchies.
  
• Display File Explorer Map Part version number - Would be handy to know what version of the map part we're dealing with in a given Map document.
  
• Auto-expand the map part to some level less than or equal to maximum - Having a defined folder depth to limit tree expansion upon refresh might be useful.
  
• Solicit the user to provide a prefix string for either or both File and Folder topics - There's an unused feature in the stock implementation which could be used to prefix file and folder names in the topic text.  Tying this to some file specification list might be handy, say "*.txt" files get a "Text File - " prefix.
  
• Speed up the file/folder traversal - The stock File Explorer map part uses the Scripting.FileSystemObject in a quasi-recursive manner. For more than 2 to 4 folder levels, or say more than 20 files or so, this implementation takes a while.  A COM object built for the purpose could be much faster, and could perhaps support non-local-file-system protocols like WebDAV, FTP or even HTMLHelp.
  
• Provide an optional total file/folder count as Callout or Topic Text in the File Explorer Map Part -  Since we have the information, it would be a user courtesy to annotate File Explorer Map Part topic text with a count of the number of files and folders beneath it in a Map document.
  
• Host a property grid in an actual property page dialog - If we're going to have all these user- settable values, we should put them in a Property Grid presentation, provide both default and per- instance settings, and support a "Restore Defaults" button to reset a given instance to the defaults.
  
• Remove the smiley robot face from message boxes and dialogs - OK, now I'm just whining.  But I'd like to get rid of the smiling robot icon appearing in the upper left corner of WinWrap Basic message boxes and dialogs.  It clashes with the rest of the MindManager UI look. "Mawkish Macro Manifestation" is a descriptive phrase for the appearance. (Don't wince, just look it up.)
  

Of course, these extensions would have to maintain compatibility with prior versions of File Explorer Map Parts.  Or we should create a distinct map part using the MindManager GSMP technology and avoid the issue.

While generating this list might fall into a category labeled "Here Motion Gives the Illusion of Progress," it also let me fool around with the MindManager macro language with some sense of purpose.  My primary source was the Language Help accessible from the MindManger Macro Editor (Tools->Macro->Macro Editor, then in the resulting window, Help->Language Help)  Sparse help topics are provided for both the Integrated Development Environment (IDE) and the macro language itself.

Under the covers, the MindManager macro language is a Visual Basic compatible scripting engine known at the time of first release (1993? 1994?) as SAX Basic.  This is the name appearing in the Help topics provided by the Macro Editor, with copyright cited for "1993-2001." 

By the by, if you look at the set of executable modules loaded by the MindManager application program (say using the most excellent Process Explorer from SysInternals, there's a module called "SBE6_32.DLL."  The version properties of this module give "WinWrap Basic" as a description, and "Polar Engineering and Consulting" as the vendor.  A second, related component, SB6ENT.OCX, also appears in the MindManager process image.  These modules carry copyright info with a 1993- 1999 date range. 

A reasonable guess is that MindJet integrated the SAX Basic product in late 1999-2000, and has stuck with that version since.  Sort of a bummer, since things have changed in the last seven years or so.

This Visual Basic compatible scripting engine product is now known as WinWrap Basic.  New .Net features are planned for later this year, it appears the Polar Engineering developers are intent on maintaining compatibility as Microsoft platforms evolve.  We can hope that MindJet will pick these up at some point, without major disruption to existing macros.

If I was looking for a procedural scripting engine to manipulate a COM-based application data model, WinWrap Basic would be a very attractive option when compared to integrating the legacy Visual Basic for Applications technology from Microsoft.  Polar Engineering's WinWrap is particularly attractive if it continues to evolve to support .Net technology, freeing the application data model from the legacy Microsoft COM environment dominated by IDispatch.

However, MindJet has committed to support of both Windows and Apple editions of MindManager.  It may be that the COM IDispatch level may be the most appropriate point of commonality between the two editions of the product.  Common in terms of the concepts exposed, not the implementation.

The only product I'm familiar with that maintains scriptable object models for both Microsoft and Apple editions is Adobe Illustrator.  While Illustrator is a very cool drawing package for commercial artists, I have no clue how much effort Adobe expends on maintaining parity between the Microsoft and Apple scripting interfaces.  With respect to Illustrator, it appears that Adobe obtained a certain level of common functionality, and let it go at that, choosing instead to focus on workgroup and workflow features involving the rest of the Adobe Creative Studio product portfolio. 

Lacking the stable of related products enjoyed by Adobe, and operating in a distinct market segment without the deep history of graphic art production, MindJet probably doesn't have the option of "being just good enough" with respect to a procedural scripting engine.  However, large opportunities exist by blending procedural scripting with declarative XML technology.  Seems to me that an XProc implementation hosted in MindManager could be a powerful way to manipulate the content of one or more Map documents, hosted locally or behind some yet-to-be-designed web service.

But then again, I'm a MindJet customer.  Without any knowledge of current product plans, I can wish for whatever I can dream up.  Ah, such luxury.

I had another one of those "how does this work?" moments with MindManager the other day.  A colleague was using MindManager to document a software installation process, mapping binary image locations in the target file system with the install steps that placed the image there.  When I innocently asked "Did you use the File Explorer Smart Map Part to get the file list?" I got one of those "Huh?" looks. 

You know, the "Huh?" look.  The one where you ask someone a seemingly simple question and they look at you like there's a funnel growing out of your forehead, or you're speaking in tongues, or professing a desire to maintain legacy code or something.

Turns out my colleague had never used the File Explorer map part that ships with MindManger Pro.  If you open a Map Document, then open the Map Parts task pane, you can select the "File Explorer" category folder to reveal three Map Parts: "All Files and Folders", "All Files" and "All Folders". Drag one of these onto a Map, and place it beneath a Topic that has a HyperLink pointing at a file system folder, and the File Explorer Map Part grabs a snapshot of the folder contents and formats it into Map SubTopics.  Which beats the heck out of switching between Windows Explorer and MindManger, copying and pasting file and folder names.  Or at least my co-worker thought so, since that's what he'd been doing for 50 files or so. 

The MindManager Pro help explains all this better than I did.  See the "Using Smart Map Parts" page in the help for details. 

But the next day I received an e-mail that ran like this:

Hey Beavis:
How come that All Files and Folders map part you showed me only goes two folders deeper than the starting folder?"

It was my turn to say "Huh?"  Sure enough, if you point the HyperLink of a Topic at "FolderX" and add the "All Files and Folders" Map Part to that Topic, you get the files in FolderX, and the child folders in FolderX, and the children (both files and folders) of those child folders, and that's it.  But we needed at least three levels below the starting folder.  I had assumed the File Explorer map parts would just recurse to the end of the file/folder tree, but that isn't the case.

Well, Smart Map Parts (SMPs) are a nifty part of the MindManager Platform.  Briefly, they let you put script behind a Topic and run that script to obtain Topic content.  So there had to be some script code around somewhere that ran when the File Explorer Map Part was inserted, and some more script that ran when that Map Part was refreshed.  Some digging around in the Registry (thanks be for the Edit->Find command in Regedit.exe) produced a key with a ScriptPath value like this:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Mindjet\MindManager\6\AddIns\Mindjet.Mm5GenericSmartMapPart.AddIn.2\SMPs\Mindjet.FileExplorer.Smp.1

Turns out that in the English version of a MindManager Pro 6 installation, there's a folder called
     <ProgramFiles>\Mindjet\MindManager 6\Generic Smart Map Part\File Explorer\ENU\scripts
(where <ProgramFiles> is usually "C:\Program Files") and in that folder is a MMBasic script called Refresh.mmbas.  This is the code that animates the File Explorer Smart Map Part.  Seems likely that other languages are in a similiar folder, replacing "ENU" with a language-dependent identifier.  Buried in the Refresh.mmbas code is a snippet like so:

   
    Set attr = folderTopic.Attributes("http://schemas.mindjet.com/MindManager/GSMP/2003")
    t = attr.GetAttributeValue("Type") 
                                       
    If t = "Files" Then
       showFiles = True
       maxDepth = 1
    ElseIf t = "Folders" Then
       showFolders = True
       maxDepth = 2
    ElseIf t = "FilesAndFolders" Then
       showFiles = True
       showFolders = True
       maxDepth = 2
    End If
          
 ' Everything is OK, ready to go
 Call recurMap(folderTopic, mapPath, 0) ' map files and folders
 folderTopic.SetLevelOfDetail(1)

Hmmm....  Looks like this is where we decide what sort of update we're going to do, and set some control variables to achieve that result.   Look around some more, and it turns out showFolders, showFiles and maxDepth are all global variables, used in a subroutine called recurMap to control the scan of files and folders starting at a folder provided by the user in the HyperLink carried in the parent Topic.

Usually, I break out in hives when I see "magic numbers" in code, that is, numerics used in the manner of "1" and "2" in the snippet above.  In this case, I wimped out and just mailed the code snippet and its location to my co-worker with a "don't set maxDepth too big (like 10 or something) because the map will take a year to refresh" caveat.  But I also made a copy of the Refresh.mmbas file and added code to use constants like these:

Const MAX_FILE_DEPTH = 1
Const MAX_FOLDER_DEPTH = 6
Const MAX_FILEFOLDER_DEPTH = 3

I'm hoping someone has already done something like this.  And I'm hoping that someone will post a modified FileExplorer SMP on the Downloads/Map Parts page.  I may feel guilty (or bored, or inspired, or something just plain bloody-minded) at some future date and cobble up a modified File Explorer that lets the user set the folder depth of the Topic content created by an instance of this Smart Map Part, but then again it might take me until the second Reno presidency to get around to it.

Originally, I didn't run out and get a copy of MindManager to become a Customer Evangelist.  I don't like to admit it, but somehow I've become one, at least locally and with a very small 'e'. 

That's evangelist, sotto voce, not a gadfly Evangelist, or the embarrassing EVANGELIST,  which is followed by fanfare, distant cheering, divine imperative commands, luminous messages written on the inside of your forehead, insidious menacing opposition, ale with dwarves and elves,  hordes of orks crossing the plains at a lope, talking trees, enslaved masses, battles with darkness, etcetera and so on. 

It's just that people keep asking me questions about how to do something in MindManager, even if I'd rather talk about guitars. Or beer. Or software architecture. Or rocket surgery and brain science, or surgery science and rocket brains, or even rocket science and brain surgery, though I don’t normally dissect my personal problems in casual conversation.

Despite these qualms, this week I found myself in two different conversations with two different co-workers on the general tangent of "I have this MindManager software, how do I use it to ..."  One person is trying to organize a piece of a large business process integration project, while the other is trying to capture, summarize and publish department activity status reports over time. 

The interesting thing is that one MindManager feature turned out to be useful in two different contexts - Topic Text Markers.  And I didn't have to write code to obtain a good outcome.

A Problem of Integration

The Integration Project person has a mass of details to deal with.  This is raw material for a potentially large map or set of maps, organized around structural elements of the project -  stakeholders, customer data-sets, legacy systems, upgrade procedures, enterprise system rollouts, etc.  But there were a number of themes running through these structural topics and areas.  For example, how to connect the stakeholders using legacy system X, maintaining data-set Y, with the two different-but-related enterprise applications meant to replace X, but that will become available for adoption at different times? This person wanted to pick a main topic and have the map re-orient around that topic, sort of like the Personal Brain presentation discussed on the map navigation thread in the MindJet User Forum.  The number of these kinds of connections made map Relationships among topics unwieldy. 

But when I demonstrated the Text Marker search feature on a trial map, shazam, a dubious user became enthusiastic.  We invented a Text Marker (I think we used the word "Slugs") for a phase of the integration project, tagged everything that cared about that phase, and then searched across the 50 or so Topics for that Text Marker. Generated by a Topic Text Marker search, the navigable list of Topics tagged as "Slugs" was what turned the tide.  The idea that sets of Text Markers are completely user defined and a given Topic can have several Text markers from the same or different sets was icing on the cake. This user suddenly had a sense of control over a morass of details that had seemed overwhelming. 

So if you haven't yet, check out Text Markers and the Search task pane. Beat it up a little, Text Markers are under the Options link in the Search task pane.  If you have several Map documents linked to a master Map, the Search for Text Markers works across them in Multi-map view.  Trick, very trick.

Meetings, Bloody Meetings

The Status Summary problem belonged to a different person with different goals.  This person attends department management status meetings, but was unhappy with the flat Word documents used to capture the meeting results. To paraphrase, the problem goes something like this: "This meeting minutes Word format thing is fine the day of the meeting, but I want a larger picture, one that shows progress on action items over time.  I don't want to dig through a pile of documents to find out who did or didn't act on action items for improving how we do process X or whatever it is we're working on.  I want to generate some content to post on the SharePoint site without doing a lot of cut-paste-point-click stuff, and I want it organized by subject, not date."

Since there's usually a number of activities going on in parallel, some sort of status meeting to ride herd over the work seems needed, at least to the management folk involved. Each meeting report has the same three major sections: Attendees (who's at the meeting), Discussion Items (what they talked about), and Action Items (what they did or are going to do about some subject area). Part of the reason for the meeting is to provide senior management with a sense of what is happening on a given subject. Who took what Action Items and did they get it done yet?

Since there are direct and indirect lines of reporting in this case, a phone conference is more comforting to management than reading e-mail or discussion thread posts and generating a mental picture of progress on a given subject.  And meetings are, after all, the practical alternative to work.

Well, the meetings happen weekly.  Seems to make sense to have one Map document to hold the meeting minutes info, a Map Part to provide the three main common Topics for each week, and to add subtopics to each of the three meeting Topics to capture individual bullet points.  But how to produce a summary rolling-up the details for a given set of related action items?  This user is starting to wonder if this MindManager thing is really all that useful after all. 

If you thought Text Markers on Topics, maybe you're psychic. That's what jumped out at me. By tagging individual Action Item topics with a Text Marker giving the controlling subject of the action item, a once skeptical user was able to generate a complete, chronological action item list, on a given subject, using the Power Filter to hide all Topics not marked with a given Text Marker.  With the desired content visible and the rest hidden, it is only a few mouse clicks to generate Web, Word or HTML Help documents giving the actions and results.  Automating this by creating temporary summary topics for each Text Marker in the Action Items group is only a macro away.  And I won’t have to write it.  Maybe.

Brown Paper Packages Tied Up with String....

So Text Markers on Topics, coupled with the Search task pane and the Power Filter, is my favorite MindManager thing this week.

Two different user problems solved by the same product content filtering features, leaving the user in control of how filtering is performed and the identity of the filtering terms, that's a good thing. 

Two people feeling more effective in dealing with their seemingly endless problem data, that's a good thing. 

One reluctant customer evangelist wondering "How did I get here? Where's the men's room?" well, I guess I'll have to live with it.  To paraphrase Will Rogers, stupidity might have gotten me into this mess, but it won't get me out.

One of the things I've done with MindManager is write software requirements as Use Case behavior descriptions.  Since I wanted to generate another post about creating Map document Notes tables from Topics, it makes some sense to write a Use Case describing what this MindManager MakeTable macro should do.

This is an example of step one in a three part software development formula - first understand what it is the software should do, then make a solution work, and then make it work better.

As I got started, I realized the Use Case would make more sense in context.  So I adopted table generation as a sample software development problem.  The first installment, demonstrating the use of MindManager in creating use cases, is in the attached zip file, together with background information about requirements capture with Use Cases.  The same content is found in two formats - compiled HTML Help and as a Word document.  The .compiled HTML Help file contains a Use Case Map Template, this template is also posted in the Downloads section of this site.

Here's an excerpt from the attached sample:

This material is an example of the use of MindManager in software development. The subject at hand is the creation of tables within MindManager Topic Notes in the context of an interactive user session.

As a sample problem, table generation is complex enough to warrant a solution, small enough to easily understand, yet big enough that work in the areas of Requirements, Architecture, Design, Test, Implementation and Delivery need not be overly contrived. The first part of the story covers table creation requirements through a Use Case and some Policy and Practice statements. Subsequent parts will deal with other development activities.

There is something appealing about using the MindManager product to develop and document an extension behavior for the product. If nothing else, we have a clearly defined application domain for the effort.

An unstated assumption runs throughout this material, we'll mention it here and then leave it be. There is a big difference between performing software development and managing software development. This material is not meant to endorse a single development method or process. If a waterfall process, or a spiral process, or an iterative method, or another variation on the agile development theme floats your boat, go for it. My view is that good ideas (and good people) breed other good ideas (and grow more good people) as long as management doesn't go out of its way to shoot itself in the foot. The material presented here, using the sample problem as a basis of discussion, are things I regard as good ideas in software development. However, like any other tool or technique it is possible to use these things incorrectly. "By their works shall ye know them" says the Bible, and this applies to techniques, people, teams, technologies and organizations as well.

In the end, software development is about how people can use their time, talent and the available technology to produce something useful, possibly valuable and perhaps even beautiful. If the ride is also exhilarating, fun and satisfying, then you are fortunate as well as gifted. But I also believe that neckties are commonly used in corporate culture to hide the marks left by sphincters, so what do I know?

Assuming I can maintain the momentum, I plan on expanding this sample with additional content.  Where I see the opportunity, I'll point out how MindManager supports software development activity.

In fact, I'll do that now.  The compiled HTML Help file in the attached zip file was created with a modified version of the most excellent HTML Help Builder.  I brazenly steal the map template in that download, including it in the sample content attached to this post.  I made several modifications to the 1.0.7 version of the HTML Help Builder - one to style the Topic Hyperlinks in box with a pale yellow background, a second to omit hidden Map Topics from the generated HTML output, and a third to remove  the '*' character from subheadings in the help pages.  I plan to forward these changes to MichaelS for possible inclusion in some future HTML Help Builder revision at his discretion.

Without MindManager, I wouldn't have bothered to create the HTML Help form of the MakeTable sample.  By using a MindManager Map to create, organize and refine the content,  it is straightforward to publish in several formats - Word, web and HTML Help - repurposing the content for different uses.

It's been a few weeks since my last post.  Somehow time just passes when you're not looking.  There's a John Lennon quote for this - “Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans.”  Or working on other problems.

I'm somewhat disappointed in the dearth of comments on the Six Elements of Greatness posts.  Of course, maybe no one cares, or the posts are too long, or too dense or not immediately useful.  Or all those things. Or those posts (and the rest of this blog) just make me sound like a pompous jerk. 

But these six things - Unity, Theme, Variation, Evolution, Balance, and Hierarchy  - provide reason and rationale for why, where, when and how a platform feature should be exposed.  In good platforms (and good products, good art, good engineering and so on) these characteristics make their presence felt, supporting each other in meeting goals and enhancing the experience

When these six characteristics are at odds with each other, we get bad platforms (and bad products, bad art, bad engineering and so on).  The experience is awkward.  If we can't escape (and buy/use/own something else) we may find ourselves in the role of apologist, rationalizing bad work and awkward results through selective perception and revisionist history.

Whew.  Glad I got all that off my chest.

Moving On...

In an attempt to generate a little blog momentum, I thought I'd close out the platform post series by listing the good, bad and awkward points of MindManager 6 as a software platform.  Most of this I ran across while composing the Six Elements posts, or in writing macros and add- ins.  Each list and its content is debatable, each is fodder for future posts. Or comments, questions or cream pies.  Or something.

The Good Points:

• MindMaps are a great free-form, tree-oriented way to capture and organize information for a wide variety of uses
• User interface can be customized by user without writing code.  Check out this nice UI toolbar addition at RobinZ CAD Blog
• Automation object model exposes map document content and most of application user interface
• Add-in model allows external components (and developers, yeah!)  to provide new extensions to user interface and command logic
• Macro editor has a form of keyword completion, type-sensitive method/property help, syntax check command, a step through debugger and a reasonably small footprint
• Library, Map Parts and Map Marker task panes provide convenient access to supplementary map elements
• Smart Map Parts are a nice way to package up and reuse functionality
• New Icons, Text Markers, Images, and Templates can be organized and shared via the Library
• Topic Attributes can store new data properties on a per Topic basis
• Business Topics are associations between Topic Attribute sets and logic
• XML data formats allow out-of-band use of map to create and present content in other forms, act as user-side of legacy applications or web services.
• Import button on Explorer, and Word is useful in capturing content for map topics
• Auto-recovery of maps is seamless
• Application Update via Help menu is handy way to obtain MindJet-supplied service pack

The Bad Points:

• MindManager will not launch as an OLE Automation server. There is a mysterious, intermittent General Protection Fault after use as Automation server, which seems to require a repair install to recover normal operation. (This may be pilot error, MM launches in Javascript/VBScript just fine...)
• Only one MindManager process at a time.
• An Add-in cannot create a submenu on the existing Topic right-mouse context menu (While an Add-in can add new commands to the Topic context menu, it cannot create a brand new sub-menu. Nor can it insert new commands in the Insert, Icon Marker, Text Marker or Image sub-menus that are parented by the Topic Context menu)
• No support for a multi-map collection in object model,  no collection of maps linked to by this map
• Notes content supports a subset of XHTML transitional, cannot embed information in comments, no use of <hr> <div> or <style> tags, no link or meta tags, no raw HTML edit/copy/paste, no superscript, no subscript, no image map support, no nested tables, etc.
• Notes content makes extensive use of inline styles, making modern styling harder to do.
• No direct support for new Vista features - file tagging, sidebar, visual themes, etc...
• No information on command line startup modes - Benchmark, Bookmark, Mode, etc.  which hints that these will go unsupported in the future.  A "diagnostic" mode would be useful in giving the development team some clues on problematic behavior.  Try the command "MindManager /?" for a summary of these modes.
• The developer documentation could be more helpful.  More samples, more links among content, some indication of the type returned from a method or property accessor like Document.Selection, all these would be useful.  Further, better formatting of the DevZone content would make it easier to follow what samples are provided. The code examples use &#160 (&nbsp) extensively as content to tables whose width is 100%, so I see one long, wide block that runs off the right edge of the brower window.  Not very useful...

The Awkward Points

This list fell apart into several lists : Product Stuff, Object Model Stuff, Markup Stuff and Macro Stuff.  These points aren't generally deal- killers, but rather just sort of irritating in the right (or wrong) context.

Product Stuff

• Spell checker doesn't ignore words in all caps. Or handle first letter capitalization of new dictionary entries.
• Multi-map web export is difficult to find, slow to run, awkward to modify, no common table of contents, CSS, index, etc. among resulting pages.  And hyperlinks in Topic Notes that point at external map topics do not resolve to HTML pages, even if those maps are in the Multi-map Export, but rather point to a complete map file stashed in a child LinkedDocument folder. Click the link in the browser and you're prompted with the Save/Open/Cancel dialog.  Not too useful.
• Word Export seems to ignore target template and styles in favor of creating MMxxx paragraph styles.  So getting Map document content into a particular Word format is a pain.
• No in place editing of maps using OLE technology, so no embedding maps in Word, Excel or Visio
• No support for hosting OLE embedded/linked objects, so no adding ActiveX controls to a map, even in a Task Pane. 
• Topic Call-out positioning is not intuitive. Call-outs don't stay where you put them relative to Topic
• There's a "Right Map" topic layout on the SubTopics Layout tab of the Format Topic dialog (try the Format->Topic menu command) but no "Left Map" option.  This makes some forms of maps dealing with "several inputs, one result" sort of a pain to deal with.
• No image map editing in Topic Notes.  Would be way nice to have a way to create hotspots to other topics or external URLs in Notes images.
• A way to browse a Map, say a Map Explorer tree presentation, would make some edit, find and re-write tasks easier
• Power Filters help control topic visibility, but cannot be saved for later use

Object Model Stuff

• Object model documentation lacks examples, cross-references, related links and even complete entries in some cases.
• Cannot set the wait cursor during operation and have it stick, the cursor is reset to an arrow
• Cannot intercept the "delete topic" event to prevent user deletion of a given topic
• No inheritance of Business Topics, Topic Attributes among topics, smart map parts, etc
• No abstraction to support sets of linked maps, say a "parent" map linking to several "child" maps
• No abstraction to support storing, loading and applying view filters set by user
• No means to "compare maps and find differences" in object model.

Markup Stuff

• Wrong XHTML namespace for hyperlink targets in Topic Notes markup.  Sometimes the namespace is given as "'http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml'" instead of "http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml".  Note the extra single quotes. (But this appears to be fixed in 6.2.399.)
• Dirty flag in XML map markup just adds to file size bloat
• XSD content could carry more information in <xsl:documentation> tags.  If http://schemas.mindjet.com/MindManager/Application/2003 is going to resolve to a document, let's make it an informative description of the schema.  Seems like the license info is longer than the <xsl:documentation> content
• XSD schema files are available both in local file and via resolvable URL (this may not be a bad thing....)
• <span> and <font> tag usage, together with inline styling in Topic Notes content works against more flexible content styling techniques.  Think Cascading Style Sheets, someone.
• No nested tables in Notes content.

Macro Stuff

• Cannot disable or replace the smile icon in the upper left of macro message box displays
• Cannot handle events in the macro language

That's a lot of bullet items, but it is the sort of content and feedback useful to product design teams.  We can only hope that the MindManager development team considers some of these things as time passes and new MindJet products emerge. And keep on using MindManager to generate, capture and organize information in interesting ways.