Mind mapping integration

pieemme · December 21, 2014, 5:20am

Hello,

I find Scrivener absolutely fabulous. It is a very pleasant tool to work with and I greatly appreciate L&L’s product philosophy. As a possible future integration, I would love to see Scrivener incorporate mind maps, in particular those made with such standards as MindManager and iThoughts - the latter is designed for Mac.

naquada · December 21, 2014, 11:43am

why don’t you just drop the mindmap file into Scrivener’s binder… and then when you need to work on the mindmap itself you just open the mindmap from the binder with ‘open with external editor’

Scrivener will put in a quicklook preview of the mindmap into the binder

yosimiti · December 21, 2014, 5:59pm

isn’t Scapple mindmapping in a way?

DJL · March 21, 2015, 11:26pm

Thanks for the tip, naquada. It’s interesting that Scrivener can host an iThoughts file this way but I’m not sure it’s the best way to use the two apps together.

iThoughtsX for Mac is now working really well with iThoughts for iOS through Dropbox. For example, if an iThoughts file, located on Dropbox, is open in iThoughtsX on your Mac at home, and you are away from home making changes with iThoughts for iOS, as soon as you sync, the changes show up in your open file on your Mac. So it makes sense to keep your iThoughts files on Dropbox. Can iThoughts see a Scrivener file on Dropbox as a folder? Yes it can! But Scrivener changes the names of all the files in its folder. It may not be a good idea to mess with the Scrivener document’s folder structure.
The benefit of iThoughts with Scrivener is that an .opml file exported from iThoughts can be read as folders and notes by Scrivener. If you just put the .itmz file into Scrivener, Scrivener can’t see the text structure, just the screenshot of the mindmap.

For now, I’m enjoying that I can create useful mindmaps with iThoughts during a commute and get them into Scrivener at home.

pieemme · April 25, 2018, 4:04am

You see, the whole point for me is about switching as seamlessly as possible between Mac and iPad, which I can do rather well with iThoughts. Scapple could be just fine, but, alas, there is no Scapple for iPad

AmberV · April 25, 2018, 3:40pm

You can in fact have that capability and the one described above. Keep your iThoughts file where you want it, and in Scrivener use the File ▸ Import ▸ Research Files as Aliases… menu command to select the file. This will create an alias within the project pointing to the original on Dropbox. Now you can view the mind map with Quick Look (and it’s a bit of a shame that iThoughts doesn’t create a better preview, that might be something worth pestering them about—a nice full-size PDF preview would be great), open it out of Scrivener, keep it organised with your project material—all the while being able to pick up the iPad and edit it that way.

If that menu command doesn’t work for some reason, just make your alias with Finder and then import the alias into the binder normally.

Yeah that’s definitely a benefit to true mind-maps. Once you’re ready to break down the mind-map into written content, getting the structure into Scrivener as OPML is easy.

As to the original request: there are no plans to having some kind of mind-map “viewer” in Scrivener. It wouldn’t be impossible, for the same reason you can go from mind-map to OPML to binder outline—but it’s just not in the cards in terms of design goals. To do it right you’d need an awful lot of additional interface complexity to manage a view mode that in all reality should be handled by a separate piece of software.

pieemme · April 25, 2018, 4:14pm

Thanks for the insight. Does the procedure you recommend allow you to add new items to the map from the iPad or just to see the map you’ve made on Mac?

Silverdragon · April 25, 2018, 6:18pm

If you’ve got iThoughts syncing via Dropbox from iPad to Mac, and you link as alias to the synced Dropbox copy, then your iPad iThoughts changes will be visible in Scrivener, because you’re linking to the iThoughts Dropbox file.

But IThoughts Dropbox syncing is a whole other issue, best pursued through the iThoughts documentation. I will say that it’s possible to cause iThoughts on iOS to sync both an ordinary .itmz version, and a PDF version. Thus, by using File ▸ Import ▸ Research Files as Aliases… you could import both the .itmz link to open it on Mac iThoughtsX, and the .pdf version link so you can see your notes easily in Scrivener.

pieemme · April 26, 2018, 7:59pm

Thanks Silverdragon. I have tried to follow your suggestions. However, I don’t seem to get what I am looking for, i.e. not only seeing the maps on the iPad, but also having a second thought in bed and adding an item to my map and syncing with my Mac when I have risen. I imported an alias to the Dropbox map into Scrivener on Mac. When I sync with my iPad, I see an icon, but Scrivener (for IOS) says that this type of file cannot be opened. If I try to create an alias from within Scrivener on IOS, I see the files in Dropbox greyed out. I assume I would need to have a pdf copy there in order to see it on my iPad, but then I wouldn’t be able to edit it.

Or is there some hidden secret I am missing?

Silverdragon · April 26, 2018, 10:21pm

You’re not missing it, my explanation is.

You won’t be able to view either the iThoughts .itmz file nor the image (PDF or PNG) that you might also sync from iThoughts from within iOS Scrivener. You’ll only be able to view them within Scrivener on the Mac. This is because if you use file > import > research files by alias, those alias files are Mac-specific to your own personal hard drive. iOS Scrivener tries to open those little alias files by asking iOS to display them. iOS says, “What the heck is an alias file?” and gives up. If, OTOH, you add them to the research folder directly, iOS still won’t be able to display or open the .itmz file, but it will display the (PDF or PNG) file. But because they’re copied, the images won’t update.

My input was more aimed towards the lack of detail in the .itmz preview on Mac. Having iOS iThoughts sync an image as well as its own native format, and adding BOTH to the research folder via alias as described above will give you a great deal more detail within Scrivener on the Mac, and both will update with iThoughts changes on iOS. You just can’t see 'em on iOS.

There IS a way to open a .itmz file from within iOS Scrivener, though you won’t be able to view it there. In case you haven’t found it,

Open iThoughts on iOS, and find the map you want on the dropdown list.
Long press on the map, and choose Copy Link from the popover (black) menu.
Go to Scrivener, and open a text document (I have one in my research folder entitled iOS iThoughts Map Links. I don’t want to have to guess at 2 am…)
Type a title like “My Story’s iThoughts Map”
Select the title.
Press the Add Link button in the extended keyboard.
In the dialog that appears, delete the “http://” that’s automatically added to the text input box.
Paste in the link you got from iThoughts. Tap the Done button.

Now you can double-tap the link in that text document, and the .itmz file will open in iThoughts. If you have a spiffy-enough iPad, you can split the screen with Scrivener.

Hope this helps, and I’m sorry my previous reply was misleading.

pieemme · April 27, 2018, 5:06am

Thanksmfor your time Silverdragon. If I undesstand correctly, the end result is a direct link from within Scrivener, (as well as Scrivener for IOS ) to a synced iThoughts map. Yes, it’s next best to having iThoughts editing from Scrivener IOS.

Silverdragon · April 27, 2018, 5:58am

… Well, not quite.

Links (to iThoughts maps) built in iOS only work in iOS.
Links (to iThoughts maps) built in MacOS only work on the Mac.

For everything to work perfectly, you have to store BOTH links. Even though they both point to exactly the same map file (via Dropbox), one is in “MacOS” language (literally, it tells MacOS “Please look here on my hard drive for this.”), and one is in “iOS” language (literally, it tells iOS “Please have iThoughts open this, wherever it is.”). It’s annoying, I know.

So,

in iOS iThoughts, set up Dropbox syncing so that both .itmz files and (optionally) PDF or PNG files are synced to Dropbox. This sets up iThoughts file(s) for MacOS Scrivener, later.
Also in iOS iThoughts, copy a link to your map file, and paste it as a link inside a text file in your iOS Scrivener research folder. This sets up the ability to open the map file (in iThoughts iOS) from iOS Scrivener. You won’t be able to use this link on MacOS, but only in iOS Scrivener.
In Mac Scrivener, use File > Import > Research File as Alias to save a link to the .itmz file that’s synced to Dropbox. You’ll be able open it in iThoughtsX Mac from Mac Scrivener, and see a low-res image of the map inside Mac Scrivener. iOS Scrivener will not know what to do with this.
(Optional) Also in Mac Scrivener, use File > Import > Research File as Alias to save a link to the image file (PDF or PMG) that you (optionally) set up syncing for in Step 1. This will let you see an updated, high resolution image of the map from within Mac Scrivener. You can’t open the map from this link–it’s just to give you a better image in Mac Scrivener. Again, iOS Scrivener will not know what to do with this.

But still, once you have both the Mac links and the iOS links saved, they should keep working as long as you don’t move the map around. I hope this has made this cross-platform linking a bit clearer.

pieemme · April 27, 2018, 7:24am

They do, thanks, but I think I can live with separate cloud syncing, until there is a more convenient option. If elephants have to learn to fly, I’ll wait till they grow their own wings.