[Gllug] Mindmapping now available on OSS. Well, supposedly.

[M.Blackmore]

Mindmapping now available on OSS. Well, supposedly. 'Cos I've not played 
with it and don't have any particular reason to do so now that I've 
given up (forced into retirement for health reasons and family care) my 
academic pretensions.

But when I was doing thesis and journal articles etc. this sort of 
mindmapping s/w was HUGELY useful to a "scruffy and baroque" thinker 
such as myself:

http://www.newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=04/09/10/1946203

I think this is actually an important development for linux as desktop 
tool for punters, especially for open educational access where people 
are weak in traditional educational skills due to lack of schooling in 
formal ways (as a working class youth of my generation I count myself in 
this category - had to leave school early to bring in necessary family 
income, self-educated to university level - and still the first from my 
area to make uni level education - but never acquired many of the skills 
of "study" which always made things hard, particularly at postgrad 
level). The availability of mindmapping techniques for organising 
thoughts for the "ill-educated" is an important part of creating 
opportunities - e.g. subsistence peasants putting together a legal brief 
using the village linux box against a local landowners land grab, where 
organising the thoughts, information and dependencies of argument can be 
a horrifying task to even highly intelligent individuals unschooled in 
the mental techniques and disciplines that enable this sort of writ.

But even in ordinary circumstances I can't recommend this sort of thing 
enough to people doing complex writing, I first came across it as Tony 
Buzan's Tools for Thinking in the early/mid 70s, although the reams of 
spider-webbed foolscap sheets all over the study floor did get 
overwhelming in longer writings!

However, this sort of thing does seem to be a love it or hate it 
relationship. I love it.

If anyone has a need to use this in earnest, be nice to see a feedback.

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