Mind Mapping with View Your Mind
Detective Work
To switch easily between branch labels, use your arrow keys. If the mind map becomes too large, hold the left mouse button over a white section and drag the mouse to move the section you're interested in into view. To zoom in and out, press the magnifying glass icons in the toolbar. For an improved overview, select Edit and collapse the selected branch. Its subitems only appear again when you activate them with the arrow keys or click them in the Tree Editor. The items in the Edit menu for expanding and collapsing only apply to the elements in the Tree Editor and have the same effect as clicking on the small triangles.
Pressing Ctrl+F takes you to a search function (Figure 3). In the newly opened area, type the search term into the box at the bottom and then click the binoculars to search. The matches appear in the list above. After you select one of them, the view jumps to the corresponding branch.

Sticky
For each label, you can attach a link that leads to another mind map or to a website. Thus, for the lemon cake, you could directly reference a recipe on a food website. To do this, right-click the entry, choose References (URLs, vymLinks, …) | Edit URL and type or paste in the web address. Now a small globe appears in front of the lemon cake item. Clicking the globe icon will open a browser window with the relevant page. If you want to reference another mind map, use the context menu item References (URLs, vymLinks, …) | Edit vym link and then select the file with the appropriate mind map.
Pressing the E key opens a text editor where you can change, expand, and reformat the currently active label. Keep it as short as possible here; you will rarely need more than one keyword. For longer supplementary texts, such as recipes for lemon cake, VYM lets you create notes. To do so, first highlight the lemon cake and select View | Note Editor (or press N). A new area appears (Figure 4) with a gray background, which indicates no notes have been made. Once you click and start writing, VYM enables the text editor along with its other functions. You can import longer texts in the Note | Import menu. All branch labels with notes display a small clipboard icon that lets you open or close the note editor with a single click.
One Step at a Time
To bake the lemon cake, you have to buy the ingredients, weigh out the correct amounts, mix them, and finally bake the mixture in the oven. You can create a to-do list (subtopics) for task sequences like this. To do so, first create a separate step for each subtopic. In the example here, you would append branches to the lemon cake entry to Buy ingredients, Weigh ingredients, and so forth, as shown in Figure 5.
If the order of your subtopics is unimportant, you can sort them alphabetically in ascending or descending order by choosing the main topic (here, Lemon cake) and pressing O or Shift+O. Otherwise, you can order your subtopics by choosing each and then clicking the up or down arrow in the top menubar.
Next, you can convert these subtopics successively into tasks by right-clicking the first branch, Buy ingredients, and selecting Tasks | Toggle task, or you can press the keyboard shortcut Shift+W. Repeat this for all tasks. VYM places a red icon in front of each of the branches to indicate that it is an unfinished task. Once you have completed a task, select the appropriate entry and click on the red icon until a green icon with a checkmark appears, or press W until you see the icon you want. The meanings of the symbols are listed in Table 1.
Table 1
Task Status
Symbol | Meaning |
---|---|
Task not yet started |
|
Task being processed |
|
Task completed |
|
Task not yet started, paused |
|
Task in progress, paused |
|
Task not yet started, woken up |
|
Task in progress, woken up |
If you have to postpone buying ingredients until later, just pause the task by right-clicking the icon, selecting Sleep n days, and entering the number of days; VYM now displays a moon symbol that indicates the break (Table 1). By right-clicking the icon and then selecting Reset sleep, you can reinstate the task. All the tasks in the mind map can be displayed in a table by pressing View | Task editor (Figure 6). The table lists a priority for each task. The higher the number, the higher the priority; however, you cannot set the priority yourself: VYM computes this from the status, the age, and the period for which you send the task to sleep. By default, VYM sorts the table in descending order by priority. Clicking one of the column headings lets you sort the tasks by that column.
« Previous 1 2 3 Next »
Buy this article as PDF
(incl. VAT)
Buy Linux Magazine
Direct Download
Read full article as PDF:
Price $2.95
Subscribe to our Linux Newsletters
Find Linux and Open Source Jobs
Subscribe to our ADMIN Newsletters
Find SysAdmin Jobs
News
-
Escuelas Linux 8.0 is Now Available
Just in time for its 25th anniversary, the developers of Escuelas Linux have released the latest version.
-
LibreOffice 7.5 has Arrived Loaded with New Features and Improvements
The favorite office suite of the Linux community has a new release that includes some visual refreshing and new features across all modules.
-
The Next Major Release of Elementary OS Has Arrived
It's been over a year since the developers of elementary OS released version 6.1 (Jólnir) but they've finally made their latest release (Horus) available with a renewed focus on the user.
-
KDE Plasma 5.27 Beta Is Ready for Testing
The latest beta iteration of the KDE Plasma desktop is now available and includes some important additions and fixes.
-
Netrunner OS 23 Is Now Available
The latest version of this Linux distribution is now based on Debian Bullseye and is ready for installation and finally hits the KDE 5.20 branch of the desktop.
-
New Linux Distribution Built for Gamers
With a Gnome desktop that offers different layouts and a custom kernel, PikaOS is a great option for gamers of all types.
-
System76 Beefs Up Popular Pangolin Laptop
The darling of open-source-powered laptops and desktops will soon drop a new AMD Ryzen 7-powered version of their popular Pangolin laptop.
-
Nobara Project Is a Modified Version of Fedora with User-Friendly Fixes
If you're looking for a version of Fedora that includes third-party and proprietary packages, look no further than the Nobara Project.
-
Gnome 44 Now Has a Release Date
Gnome 44 will be officially released on March 22, 2023.
-
Nitrux 2.6 Available with Kernel 6.1 and a Major Change
The developers of Nitrux have officially released version 2.6 of their Linux distribution with plenty of new features to excite users.