Mind Maps

A Mind node is a labelled node that knows its parent. It lives in the palette's Build category in Diagram mode, and the whole point of it is the keyboard: you can build an entire branch while you are still talking.

The two keys

You never have to stop typing to reach for the palette, and you never have to draw the connectors: each new node arrives joined to its parent. Type as fast as you like: keys pressed before the next node is on screen are held for it, so a burst of several nodes lands exactly as typed.

With the mouse or on a touch screen

Select a mind node and Add child and Add sibling are on its toolbar. They are also the first options on the quick-add + on each side of the node, each naming its shortcut. On a phone or tablet, where there is no Tab key, these are how you grow a map.

Where nodes land

A map you build from the keyboard stays tidy: each parent sits centred on its children, and siblings stack neatly with no gaps or overlaps. As you add nodes, the map makes room for them, and the view scrolls to keep the node you are typing in on screen.

Once you drag a node yourself, the map is yours: new nodes are placed where they fit and nothing you arranged moves. To tidy it again, right-click a node and choose Tidy Map in its Mind Map section. A message at the foot of the screen says Map tidied, or Map already tidy when there was nothing to move.

Flows

The Mind Map section of a node's right-click menu picks the shape the whole map takes:

• Tree: branches to the right, siblings stacked down. The default.
• Balanced: branches both ways off the root, the classic hand-drawn mind map.
• Downward: branches below, siblings spread across, like an org chart.
• Bubble: branches fanned around the parent.

Picking one re-arranges the whole map straight away, around the root, which stays put. It is one step, so Undo puts the old arrangement back. Tab and Enter mean the same thing in every flow; the flow only decides where the new node lands.

Edit Outline

To rethink a whole map at once, open it as a list. Hover over the map's root (the node it starts from) and press Edit Outline among the small icons along its top (they hide while the root is selected; see Element Indicators), or find Edit Outline in the root's Mind Map section, under Tidy Map. The whole map opens as a list, one row per node, so you can reorder, nest and rename branches as fast as you can type, or paste a list in from your notes. Save applies it all as one step, so Undo puts the map back exactly as it was.

See Edit a Mind Map as an Outline for the keys, pasting a list in and what Save keeps.

Sizes and looks

A new node looks like the others at its level: siblings match each other, and the first node of a new level takes after its parent. The connector matches the ones already in the map. So a map drawn with bold roots, tinted branches and dashed lines keeps growing that way.

A mind node can be made round: right-click it, open Style, then Border, and set its corner radius to Full. A square node with a full radius is a circle, which is how the bubble map template draws its bubbles.

Moving and deleting

Dragging a node takes its whole branch with it. Resizing a node resizes only that node.

Deleting a node leaves its children in place, promoted to roots of their own. It does not cascade, because deleting one node and silently losing nine is the kind of thing you only notice after the undo stack has moved on.