If you mouse over the ‘views’ column of the search results then a box appears under the mouse with a list of the maps where that particular result appears, clicking on one of these entries will bring up that map.Ģ. Nodes can be tagged with keywords which can then be used to search for particular nodes, although using the results of a search is not intuitively obvious. This allows you to roll your own type of node with your own icons.Ĭompendium also supports transclusion, the same node may appear in different places and when it is edited all the instances of that node are changed. Links can have a type but they cannot split or join like they can in VUE.Īlthough there are eleven types of node you can extend this by using what the Compendium team call stencils. Links are also quick to create, just right click and drag from one node to another. A node may be any one of eleven types selected from a pallet and dragged onto the map, or you can type the keyboard shortcut to create a node at the mouse position, so creating nodes is very quick. There is no hierarchy unless you make it yourself, the map can contain floating nodes and there can be as many maps on one canvas as you have room for. This means it is easy to split up your information into many small easy to understand maps instead of having one gigantic sprawling map. This type of node contains a new map on a new canvas which can contain map nodes which contain other maps, etc … Memory is the only limit to the depth to which this can go. One type of node which is particularly interesting is the Map node. Maps can be as big as you like, the canvas is enormous. A Compendium database starts off with one ‘Home’ map on which you can place nodes and connections between nodes (links). VUE is easier to use and has more extensive documentation.Ĭompendium places few constraints on how you organise material. Fortunately it is a simple job to install Compendium LD, copy the extra stencils then uninstall it and paste the stencils into appropriate place in Compendium NG. The version I am using is Compendium NG but there is another version, Compendium LD is a fork of an older slightly less advanced version aimed specifically at students and which has been given a more extensive set of node stencils (templates). Collaborative editing of a map is possible. For home use the database will most likely be set up on your local machine and you will be the only one to have access to it, but it is possible to set the database up on a remote machine and to have many people working on the same database at the same time. By default Compendium uses the Derby database embedded within Java (Compendium is written in Java and you can download the source code) but it can also use a MySQL database. I don’t know why it is still there.Īnother thing which appears on your home map is a recycling bin which is where deleted nodes go to die or be resurrected.Ĭompendium stores its maps in a database so there is no ‘save’ button, whatever changes you make to a map are saved continuously. You can open it but it will be an empty list. It acts like a node and you can link to it. It was found that most of the users of the program used external e-mail applications to send each other messages and so this function was removed but on your home map there is still an Inbox which you cannot delete or use to send messages. In one of the earlier versions there was an e-mail system built in to the program so that different users of the database could send each other messages, but this e-mail system did not connect to the outside world it was purely internal. There is one feature which was tried and found not to be useful but was not entirely removed. It may not be as pretty as some of the other mind mapping tools but it is much more capable and functional. It is a free and open source tool for representing, organising and communicating knowledge, processes and arguments. Compendium does much more than just Mind Mapping. Compendium has been under development at the Open University for many years.
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