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Eclipse Phase Core Rules as mind map in Freeplane

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Jay Dugger Jay Dugger's picture
Eclipse Phase Core Rules as mind map in Freeplane
To learn Eclipse Phase, I copied the entire structure and text of the Eclipse Phase core rulebook into a mind map (1). Right now, you can see an image of the mind map at Flickr (2), and you can both download--or better, contribute to--the mind map from GitHub (3). You'll need a current copy of Freeplane (4) to open or edit the document. Even if you've no use for the mind map as such, you can export from the map to a variety of formats: OpenWriter, OPML, plain text, MediaWiki, etc. I hope you'll find the work useful, and I hope you'll contribute to the map (5). (1) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mindmap (2) http://www.flickr.com/photos/jay_dugger/5400419273/ (3) https://github.com/JayDugger/Eclipse-Phase-Mind-Maps (4) http://freeplane.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/Main_Page (5) https://github.com/JayDugger/Eclipse-Phase-Mind-Maps/issues
Sometimes the delete key serves best.
thelabmonkey thelabmonkey's picture
Re: Eclipse Phase Core Rules as mind map in Freeplane
Cool idea. Also, it is entirely too appropriate that the EP game is contained in something called a "Mind Map". Only problem is that I downloaded Freeplane and it won't open the .mm file... "Error while parsing file:C:\Documents and Settings\mjohnson\Desktop\ep\JayDugger-Eclipse-Phase-Mind-Maps-e50d0b2\Various Authors - Eclipse Phase - (2011).mm"
Jay Dugger Jay Dugger's picture
Re: Eclipse Phase Core Rules as mind map in Freeplane

Thank you for taking the time to download the file. I wholly forgot to mention in the previous post that I used the latest development release of Freeplane [1], freeplane_bin-1.2.2_06.zip. You will almost certainly need to use that version. If you did use 1.2.2_06, I'd like to know that too.

I apologize for my oversight.

[1] http://freeplane.sourceforge.net/preview/

Sometimes the delete key serves best.
Dry Observer Dry Observer's picture
Re: Eclipse Phase Core Rules as mind map in Freeplane
Hm. How do you enter an entire document into the mind map once you have the software? Is there a simple explanation for that, or do I need to read the entire manual? Thanks for this thread, by the way.

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Jay Dugger Jay Dugger's picture
Re: Eclipse Phase Core Rules as mind map in Freeplane
I can think of a few ways to enter any entire document into Freeplane. I did the Core Book the hard and simple way, with lots of copy-and-paste. It required more work and time than thought. The longer explanation that follows also appears in the Workflow topic of the Eclipse-Phase-Mind-Maps wiki on GitHub. I'll update that as I work. Feel free to refer to and to contribute to it. This workflow description omits minor items such as "Styles" and an explanation for the metadata branch. It also assumes you know what Freeplane means by "Node," "child," "branch," "Attribute," and "Notes." This workflow description also omits any description of how to use git.
  1. I opened the PDF, selected all the text of the Table of Contents, and copied it to the clipboard.
  2. I opened a new map in Freeplane. In it I made a new node with the title "IMPORT". I made a child Node of "IMPORT", which I titled "Core Book".
  3. I pasted the clipboard's contents into the Note Window of the node "Core Book".
  4. For each of the chapters of the Core Book, I made a new Node. At each new Node, I cut the chapter's title from the "Core Book" and pasted it into the Node's title.
  5. For each subsection of each chapter of the Core Book, I made a new Node entry beneath the appropriate Node. At each new Node, I cut the subsection's title from the "Core Book" Node's Note Window and pasted it into the appropriate Node's title.
  6. I repeated step five until I had completely reconstructed the Core Book's Table of Contents. Each Core Book chapter became a branch of the mind map. Each line entry in the Table of Contents became a Node of the mind map. This took a long time.
  7. For each Node of the mind map, I copied-and-pasted the text from the corresponding section of the Core Book PDF into the Node's Note window. This took a longer time than step six.
  8. You can filter, search, and select by Attribute in Freeplane. I opened the Attribute Manager and created an Attribute named "status" with the values "corrected", "raw", and "proofed". I then created an Attribute "origin" with the values "Core Book", "Gatecrashing", "Sunward", and "Jay Dugger". These two attributes tag Nodes according to whether they've just been imported, had a single editing pass, or been proofread, and by their source in a rule book or from a particular person.
  9. I selected all Nodes of the mind map, deselected the branch titled "IMPORT", and assigned all the selected Nodes the attribute "status" with value "raw" and the attribute "origin" with value "Core Book". This marks all material in the mind map just imported sans editing from the Core Book as such.
  10. I deselected all Nodes of the mind map, selected the branch title "IMPORT", and assigned all the selected Nodes the attribute "origin" with value "Jay Dugger". This marks all material in the mind map that I made as such.
  11. I started correcting the raw import of each Node's Notes by reading the Note text, correcting line breaks and copy-paste errors as I went. This means I had a copy of the Eclipse Phase rulebook open in one window with the mind map open in an adjacent window. After I corrected a Node's Notes, I changed that Node's status attribute from "raw" to "corrected".
Sometimes the delete key serves best.