Help &/or Feature request: to be able to anchor the vertical position of children not to rise above parent

[awolo]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe. How to improve readability of long lists of children that are longer than the height of the screen.

Describe the solution you'd like The problem for me is when I cannot see both the parent and the topmost child without scrolling. The current default node placement emphasizes the children in the middle of the list rather than the top. But since I read from top to bottom, not starting at the middle and then up and down. Also, I often like to put the most important children at the top, so seeing the title of the list, or the context, along with these items is important.

Is there any way to limit the vertical placement of the list of children so that the highest child does not rise above the parent? I can move it manually, and sometimes do, but of course Freeplane overrides that placement every time I add a child to the list, either by insertion or by moving an existing node into the list.

Another way to look at this is that I find lists to be the best way to write, store, and read my work as it develops. I see Freeplane., actually, as a nested list manager. I would just like the parent node, which is the title of the list of children, to be at the top and to the left of the list, not in the middle.

I periodically try Freeplane's Outline View, but it is very frustrating for me because it enforces the outline verticality too strictly. I love Freeplane just as it is, I just would like the ability to limit the vertical placement of the top child to be parallel to its parent.

Thank you. Allen, many decades long devoted Freeplane user

[euu2021]

Related request.

I can visualize the difference between what you want and the Outline Mode, but that difference may not be clear to others (like in the thread linked above). Maybe, you could make a side by side comparison, with screenshots.

[awolo]

Thanks for seeing the history of my thought. Please forgive any repetition, I cannot visualize what is missing in my explanation so far.

All I want is to be able to see the parent node and the top child at the same time, no matter how many children there are, in normal Freeplane mode. Maybe there is already a way to do it that I am not aware of. I thought I'd try again to get some help with this. Is there a way to enforce a rule: child cannot be higher than its parent. Other placement rules continue as at present. I think that's all I'm asking for.

Outline mode: The only thing I like about Outline mode is that the parent and the top child are next to each other. That's good. But other than that, what I want actually has little in common with Outline mode. I love the flexibility of working in the normal mode; I do not enjoy the Outline Mode very much because it is static and restrictive, and it lacks the fluidity and elegance of the normal mode. Snapshots don't show that. Outline mode resembles outlines in other tools, maybe notepad++ or LibreOffice if you have worked with anything like that. Folding in those environments is great for coding and writing texts. But in a mind map environment, Outline mode is like, monochrome, whereas normal Freeplane is color! And even better, I claim, with my enhancement which would enhance readability.

The limitation with Freeplane: normal Freeplane mode insists on moving the top child up as the number of children increases. If I place it manually, it only stays in place until the number of children, or their heights, changes. And yes, the Outline mode does show that, but I really don't want my whole map in one super long vertical that has no flexibility other than folding.

One specific example: Currently, if you are working with two long lists of children, you cannot see where the lowest child of the top list is, and that the next node down is the top child of the list below. Unless you have the Edges formats clear, which sometimes I do and sometimes not.

Another way of looking at it is that, in the normal course of my work the map changes dynamically, in unpredictable ways, as I add, delete, and change nodes. The radial model of the original mind map is good for brainstorming, but once it gets large, it's more of a burden than a help. After all, we read from the top down, not from the middle out, up and down.

Larger than a certain size, I see the map as nested lists, and I read lists top-down, not radially. And remember, the mind map idea is a paper idea, not software idea. I think this would be an evolution of the original idea that would make maps more readable without losing any of the benefits.

Sorry for the scaling of the examples, but the benefits are most visible with lots of children, and then the examples are hard to read. And this does not show why my way is different; that becomes apparant while using the program:

[euu2021]

All I want is to be able to see the parent node and the top child at the same time, no matter how many children there are, in normal Freeplane mode. Maybe there is already a way to do it that I am not aware of.

No, it's not possible.

I will add a side by side comparison showing how the horizontal growth would behave:

[awolo]

Spot on counterexample. It's not for every situation, and it's not meant to replace the normal Freeplane interface.

What I am proposing is another option in View Settings, along with Outline View.

Would Dimitry weigh in on the amount of work it might take to add this option?

[euu2021]

I did not add it as a counterexample, just as an additional example to complement your explanation.

Something that your request made me think: it seems that the field of outliners is way more popular than the field of mindmapping software. Your suggestion would make FP more appealing for that large userbase of Outliners, by using the visual language that is familiar to outliners, but with the additional richness and flexibility of the FP "main" mindmapping view.

[ldmpub]

I guess (based on new strings to translate) that some dev is on going to add this feature 😊.

[ldmpub]

I confirm my guess: it looks like @dpolivaev is already working on it, see https://github.com/freeplane/freeplane/commit/6c99f1a8a7363abca2b03aa9597ab241d16bc47c 👍

[euu2021]

Please, test it at 1.10.5-pre01:

It's interesting. I still need to test it more.

[awolo]

Thanks, Dimitry, for 1.10.5-pre01. Also thanks to euu & Nam.

I haven't had a chance to test it yet because I had emergency root canal surgery today.

I invite comments on user experience, usability, etc., both as a new FP feature, but also if anyone enjoys using it as an outliner or, what I'm looking forward to, lists of lists.

Thanks again, Allen