DIY metaphysics: mind-mapping software

Ages ago I promised a very, very patient person that I would try and construct a Universalist Christian metanarrative in aid of a new Universalist ecclesiology and mission.

That hasn’t happened yet. But imagine my ears perking up when — several weeks ago — I saw a reference to a piece of software with the tagline: “So you want to write a completely new metaphysics? Why don’t you use FreeMind?” Plus, being open source, I was hooked.

Alas, being written in Java, it means I had to install a Java Runtime Environment — the crucial bit to porting this software to all operating systems — on my poor Linux box. Why not ask me to perform back surgery on myself at the same time?

So FreeMind is out, at least for the moment. (This is also why I was following the branch off of InfoCentral, future development of which is in Java.)

But being all open-source and all, the wiki writer offered some alternatives — mentioning their shortcomings including making use of the outline mode of word processors and two pieces of software for Linux: VYM/View Your Mind and kdissert.

Since these latter ones don’t need Java, I’ll try them and report later.

Later. VYM has to be compiled. To much trouble for a look-see. Skip.

Even later. And do what I might I can’t get kdissert. Blast!

Past my bedtime. Java run time environment “back surgery” complete. See this page for instructions.

Sunday morning. Got up, made tea, ran dpkg -i freemind__0.7.1-6__all.deb as root and now it works. Now, too, I have to learn how it works.

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