Mindmapping via a “hand tool” is great. With data becoming more and more important it is time to automate it. We developed a simple command language and interpreter (Corel/Mindmanager Macro) to do so. For more than 20 years mindmapping has been my personal productivity booster. It helps to organize my thoughts, to play on different fields, to plan, to develop and to write. With data becoming more and more important, it is time for a next round. Spending time with mindmapping software as part of a creative process, planning or writing is a pleasure. But spending time to visualize information is becoming more and more a load. It certainly is possible, but it takes often too much time and energy. As an example, look at the Figure 1. It is very simple in structure; it has a central topic, 13 main topics (picture only) and an additional main topic with some statistics. Figure 1 - Simple mindmap, nevertheless a lot of work In this example the creative part of the process to produce the map is rather limited. Maybe you need two minutes to set-up the main idea. But be honest, how many minutes will it take to produce the complete map? and even worse: this map is about UN Sustainable Development Goal #09. There are 17 such goals, so producing such a map for each of these goals will cost you 17 times that amount of time. All this time you can not spend to creative and more engaging processes! Mindmapping software is like a Swiss Army Knife, a fantastic tool in all kinds of situations. However, this tool needs the hands of a human all the time. So there is an upper limit to the fun you can have with it. In complex applications (eg a map with 100 nodes, decorated with images, markers, hyperlinks etc.), using the tool is too laborious. In series production (eg a series of 17 maps), the repetition becomes boring. We have to distinguish creative work from creating graphics. The latter should become more and more data driven and automated.

1. A Mind Shift in Mind Mapping
Pieter van der Hijden (pvdh@sofos.nl) - 20 June 2022
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
1. The challenge
For more than 20 years mindmapping has been my personal productivity booster. It
helps to organize my thoughts, to play on different fields, to plan, to develop and to
write. With data becoming more and more important, it is time for a next round.
Spending time with mindmapping software as part of a creative process, planning or
writing is a pleasure. But spending time to visualize information is becoming more and
more a load. It certainly is possible, but it takes often too much time and energy. As an
example, look at the Figure 1. It is very simple in structure; it has a central topic, 13
main topics (picture only) and an additional main topic with some statistics.
Figure 1 - Simple mindmap, nevertheless a lot of work
In this example the creative part of the process to produce the map is rather limited.
Maybe you need two minutes to set-up the main idea. But be honest, how many minutes
will it take to produce the complete map? and even worse: this map is about UN
Sustainable Development Goal #09. There are 17 such goals, so producing such a map
for each of these goals will cost you 17 times that amount of time. All this time you can
not spend to creative and more engaging processes!
Mindmapping software is like a Swiss Army Knife, a fantastic tool in all kinds of
situations. However, this tool needs the hands of a human all the time. So there is an
upper limit to the fun you can have with it. In complex applications (eg a map with 100

2. 2
nodes, decorated with images, markers, hyperlinks etc.), using the tool is too laborious.
In series production (eg a series of 17 maps), the repetition becomes boring.
We have to distinguish creative work from creating graphics. The latter should
become more and more data driven and automated.
2. Not convinced?
The mindmapping software we use is Corel's Mindmanager. It offers some options to
convert external data into a mindmap, eg simple copy/paste, database interface, Excel
mapping. Other mindmapping software also offer some input / conversion functionality.
These are nice if they exactly fit your needs. But even for a simple map like in Figure 1,
these functions do not fit. So there is a Missing Link.
Look at Figure 2. To create it once with a tool like Mindmanager is fine. To do a similar
job every day: boring. To check whether the detailed information contained in it is still up
to date: killing. So, we need tools to avoid the boring and killing experiences.
Figure 2 - Mindmap with images (logos, flags), markers and hyperlinks
In fact we miss a link to close the gap between data management and mind
management. Perhaps it is more appropriate to speak of a MIND-SHIFT: Don't just see
mindmapping software as a Swiss Army Knife in the hands of the user. Also see it as a
kind of plotter/drawing machine where (hardly) a user needs to be involved.
3. The solution
Just as we can control 3D printers, laser cutters and CNC machines by sending a series of
commands to them at a fairly low level, we would like to do the same wit h our
mindmapping software. In fact we want to convert our interactive Swiss Army Knife into
a data driven digital "drawing machine".
Fortunately, Mindmanager has an extensive and well-documented API (MindManager
Windows 22 API) and an interactive development environment to use it (WinWrap ®
Basic Editor and the programming language "WWB-COM" for Visual Basic for Applications
™ compatibility). As far as we know, competing mindmapping products do not offer such
functionality.

3. 3
With Mindmanager we could develop a digital drawing machine by programming a single
macro which reads a text file containing low level mindmapping commands, interprets
them and executes the corresponding Mindmanager actions. We have built an interpreter
that "understands" five commands (add topic (node), add image, add markers, add
property and add hyperlink) and neglects anything else. These commands should be
offered in hierarchical sequence, starting with the central topic etc.
For the format of the commands we used "mark down" (.md) conventions. So you use a
markdown editor to create, inspect or change command files. Normally, users will
generate these files via dedicated software in their "data studio".
The command file contains command lines and text lines. Command lines start with a
special character and contain one command per line. All lines not being command lines
are considered text lines. So far, these text lines are skipped.
Command lines always start with a special character. Currently, the following commands
are supported:
 # = new topic, eg # central topic, ## main topic, ### subtopic etc until
######
 ( = topic image, eg (filename | width (mm) | height (mm))
 [ = topic hyperlink, eg [Sofos Consultancy](http://www.sofos.nl)
 : = topic property, eg :Country:Jordan:
 ! = topic marker, eg: !SDG-04-08-09-10 (group name - item label - item - label
etc.
Our workflow is: 1. create the command file (.md) (either manually or
automatically), 2. run the macro file md-interpreter.mmbas, 3. select the md-
file and 4. see what is happening!
4. Known issues
1. The macro starts a new map with default settings, marker lists etc. Workaround
for more flexibility: a. insert a breakpoint as soon as the macro created the central
topic of the new map; b. adjust the theme, marker list etc of the new map; c.
resume the macro processing.
2. The macro processes the SDG-marker group correctly (see attachment); others
still have to be implemented.
3. The md file should be UTF-8, although some languages, eg Arabic, might result in
incidental errors.

4. 4
5. Wrap-up
1. It is a mind shift to use mindmapping software, i.e. Mindmanager, as a data
driven machine instead of a hand tool.
2. We developed a simple but extendable command language to run this data
driven machine automatically.
3. A data studio like Jupyter Notebook, Pandas and Mathplotlib generates the
required command file at the data side.
4. A single custom-made macro interprets the command file at the Mindmanager
side.
5. Especially in case of repetitive work and in case of data updates, this solution is a
big time saver.
6. The ability to use pictures (logo's, flags), hyperlinks and texts (node titles) as
data triggers the implementation of an image bank, hyperlink repository and
multi-language texts.
7. Multi-language texts enable the easy generation of different language editions
of the same mindmap.
The command language and its interpreter can be improved and extended further. We
will work on that. The Creative Commons Attribute license makes it possible to join.
Please, go ahead!
You findthe macro file,the SDGmarkersfile anda sample MD-file athttps://bit.ly/pvdh-mindshift.