I like the concept Phlip, and it's impressive you can achieve that much with so
little code. It also looks like a very useful way of presenting a collection of
blog articles. Very helpful for someone trying to figure out where to go
exploring an archive. So when are you going to substitute this for your blog's
tag cloud?



Nevertheless, I must quarrel with your use of the term mind-map. Did Crispin
and Gregory use this term? When I saw your letter, I was thinking, how could
you /possibly/ make a mind map out of a collection of tags? When I saw the
example I immediately thought, "oh! you mean concept graphs". Because to me, a
concept graph is a collection of nodes, each containing a keyword, and linked by
lines.

A mind map is what Tony Buzan invented, and what MindJet implemented (and many
others copied): a radially drawn tree with a central concept fleshed out in
increasing detail, with pictures and annotations to illustrate and clarify the
concept.

Sorry to be pedantic, but I think it's a valuable distinction.

Alan Baljeu




________________________________
From: Phlip <phlip2005@...>


Netizens:

Crispin & Gregory's new book, /Agile Testing: A Practical Guide for Testers and
Agile Teams/, has a kewt "mind map" at the start of each chapter. It inspired me
to find a way to use the "tag cloud" on a blog to draw a mind map of the posts,
linked by their tags in common.

The result is this little project:

http://broadcast. oreilly.com/ 2009/02/merb- mind-maps. html

It showcases...

- graph theory - including Minimum Spanning Tree
- GraphViz - to typeset the mind maps
- Merb - a Rails-style website platform
- Ruby - that annoying language that won't go away
- RSpec - a Behavior Driven Development system
- transparent PNG files with ImageMagick drop-shadows
- assert{ 2.0 } - an assertion that reflects its expressions
- assert{ xpath } - the latest version of my assert_xpath system
- TDD for algorithms & graph theory!
- fixture-dependencie s - a Rails fixture clone with more features
- GraphvizR - a lite Ruby gem that wraps GraphViz dot notation
- and even a tiny bit of HAML!

The algorithm itself depends on none of those things, so any blog could use the
algorithm to present the mind-maps that are already latent within it!

_


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