When will the windows version include “Import OPML”. This is becoming a real issue for me.
Lars
Can anyone help with a “workaround” till this is possible?
In my particular case, I use mindmaps to help organize all my writings during the brainstorming phase. Depending on situation, I use either MindJet or FreeMind. With the help of iThoughts I can easily convert to either format and in the case of OPML I use FreeMind with the mm2opml.xsl.
The challenge is I can’t find a way to import the opml file into Scrivener. Am I missing something?
Alternatively, has any windows user found a way to easily import either an mmap or mm file into Scrivener?
I actually place a direct link to the Freeplane file in my project references section for the mind mapped outline I did of my novel in progress. If you link the files on your local hard drive (or even web addresses work, it’ll just open up your default browser and go straight to that webpage), it’ll act just like you went to the folder the file is in and opened the file directly in the default program. You can launch anything you want that way, mind maps, excel spreadsheets, mp3 play-lists, videos, games, whatever. Hope that makes sense and helps.
Thanks MrDithers.
I do link to the maps as needed. My challenge is I was hoping to be able to easily create a textual outline within Scrivener in the same way I can export a mindmap to Word or OO Writer as an outline. That’s actually my present work-around - export mmap/mm to docx/odt and import into Scrivener. However the process is anything but elegant, clumsy is the word that comes to mind.
Since even the market leader MindManager does support OPML only in his Mac version, I don’t know if there will be such a feature in the Windows version. OPML seems to be Mac only (and iPad, of course).
SimpleMind Desktop is a Windows mindmapping program that exports to OPML. I contacted Sales a few weeks ago and they anticipated OPML import into the Windows version of Scrivener this month (October). I’m looking for more information on the next release of Scrivener for Windows with this feature which is why I’m reading these posts now.
OPML itself is just an XML specification, which is just a fancy term for saying that a plain-text document has been composed in a very precise way to create some kind of structure within it—in this case an “outline”. It is at root just a plain-text file though, and thus is not specifically a Mac or Windows format.
You might be right in saying however that it is more prevalently used amongst Mac software. That wouldn’t surprise me.
Thanks for the explanation AmberV. So the next question, as it’s really just a special type of txt file: When will Scrivener allow us lowly windows users to be able to import OPML?
If you know how to program in C# you could use my ScritchLib library to make it easier to do some of the Scrivener aspects of this.
You’d have to write separate code to read the OPML file (using LINQ-to-XML this would be trivial), and then use the ScritchLib to create Binder Items in the tree for each one. You’d then have to create corresponding RTF document items (which should be relatively easy) and then dump the text into them, and save everything.
If there is special formatting, you probably wouldn’t get all this, at least not without writing substantial extra code, but something reasonable could be done in a matter of hours.
Soon, soon!
It’s there, it’s there! Windows 1.5 Beta has OPML and Freemind support! Congrats, Lee!!
Very awesome additions!! Thank YOU BIG TIME! Wishing all a great holiday season and awesome year ahead in 2013!