Alan Baljeu wrote:

> Nevertheless, I must quarrel with your use of the term mind-map.

It begins with M, making the title alliterative.

I myself quarrel with the use of "Merb" in the title. There's almost no Merb in
the content, and I only forced myself to use it because I personally needed to
learn it before it devours Rails.

> Did Crispin and Gregory use this term?

If they did, would I be off the hook? That's "appeal to authority", you know...

> When I saw your letter, I was
> thinking, how could you /possibly/ make a mind map out of a collection
> of tags?

Posts are the nodes, and tags-in-common are the edges. But...

> 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.

Point. I picked up "mind map" because it's a cool term I saw around the
interthing. There are two remaining issues:

- if you blog about your favorite topics (such as "sex", "drugs",
and "rock-n-roll"), then the links between your posts will
indeed map your mind

- I auditioned some GraphViz tools that display radial links out
from a root, but I couldn't briefly get them to look right
in a bloggable format

The "mind map" I learned in the 1970s might have gone under a different name. I
don't recall it - obviously. It's a classroom note taking technique looking like
this:

+-----------------
/ +----
/ /---/____
+---+------+--------
\
+---+-------
\_______

It's a side-ways outline on paper, formatted to make adding new callouts easy.
Maybe GraphViz can do that, but it should not require excess directives. I
wanted to avoid fun like "noderank".

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

Distinct pedantry is where it's at!

--
Phlip