continuing with my mindmanager x5 experiments, i wrote XSLT that converts the native mindmanager xml format to OPML. as it turns out,
if you disregard the presentational information that mindmanager stores for each node, the 2 formats are quite alike. it was very easy to convert from one to the other.
i have yet to do the inverse, opml2mindmanager. i guess i could figure out the minimal requirements for the mindmanager xml representation, but i will probably wait until mindjet releases their mindmanager x5 developer docs. you’d want to round trip to make this useful beyond satisfying your inner geek.
i always liked outlines, being very much a list person, but when i discovered mind mapping software, something clicked. i realized that i could harness latent visualization skills to help with retention of ideas. my clumsiness with analog media had prevented me from experimenting with mind maps earlier. not so with mindmanager.
the biggest improvement of mind maps over outlines is the ability to relate nodes in a mind map to each other. also of interest, embellishing a mind map with visual clues. i know that some outliner let you attach links to a node, but unless i am missing something, there can only be one link per node.
i am not yet sure what i will use this XSLT for. here are some ideas:

• export mind maps as outlines (obvious)
• annotate imported OPML blogrolls
• prototype sitemaps (though i am not sure if any CMS besides the userland products uses OPML for that)
• aggregate with other XML data (RSS, FOAF etc)

mindmanager ships with some XML aggregation samples, such as the ability to associate RSS feeds with certain nodes in the mind map. upon first glance, it struck me as a toy, but i am sure they are only scratching the surface there. mac users have had software to correlate feeds, contacts, bookmarks, pictures etc for a while, but i am not sure if these products hit a sweet spot just yet. then again, they exude cool, and that is reason enough 🙂
i am pretty confident that interesting stuff like XTM support will fall into place quickly once mindjet builds upon it’s quite active community and encourages it to innovate. being of the geek tribe, i am not very often prepared to pay for software (with all the open source solutions out there), but i gladly pay for mindmanager.
anyway, let me know if you think this is hot area, or have ideas for exploration.

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