map2wiki — Convert MindManager Maps to wiki format
I recently started experimenting with wiki.activityowner.com as a means of more flexibly gathering and updating knowledge about MindManager, ResultsManager, GyroQ, and GTD, and to enable activityowner.com readers to participate in documenting tools like MindReader and Mark Tasks Complete.
This feels like a bit of a retreat for a map evangelist, but while MindManager has wiki-like power and can function that way today on a corporate intranet server, it can’t compete with mediawiki yet for web/internet use. While you can share mindmanager maps on the web, they won’t be indexed and are not as accessible and familiar to non-map users as a wiki. Wiki technology also currently has more power in simultaneous editing and revision control.
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Although wiki-markup is fairly straightforward once you get used to it, I found it a pain to have to learn another syntax and wished I could just export from MindManager to get started as has been recently suggested on the MindManager yahoo group. The new map2wiki macro is a attempt to enable this. People comfortable with editing maps may prefer to generate and maintain their content there and then export to a wiki periodically. If nothing else, it may be handy as a way to get a first draft of a wiki page while you get comfortable with the syntax.
You can learn more about map2wiki at http://wiki.activityowner.com/index.php?title=Map2wiki. This is just a quick first draft to get the project rolling. I look forward to the creativity and programming prowess of the site’s readers to push it along. While wiki.activityowner.com has some capability for handling comments and discussion, I’d recommending using comments on this blog entry as the focal point for that.
Independent of this utility, feel free to try your hand at marking up and improving on the content in wiki.activityowner.com. You can get comfortable editing using the sandbox on wikipedia.org.
Entries 
Synesthesia » Mind-mapping for projects and Wikis said,
April 11, 2007 @ 3:27 am
[…] 2007–4-11] And almost exactly 4 years after I wrote this post, a very similar idea about the combined use of wiki and mindmaps emerges over at Activityowner.Com – with the big […]
Julian said,
April 11, 2007 @ 3:28 am
I love how ideas come around again! You’ve gone one better by writing the code to do it :-)
ActivityOwner said,
April 11, 2007 @ 8:27 pm
Thanks Julian — You are a visionary :-). Given that it only required 30 lines/30 minutes of programming, I’m surprised it hasn’t been done previously.
I added another 15 lines of code to the development version to enable the option of extracting hyperlinks from the body of the notes. It uses a series of replace commands to remove html generated by MindManager and converts the hyperlinks to wiki markup format.
This won’t handle any rich formatting beyond hyperlinks so I’m going to leave it off by default.
I also decided that best way to test the program would be to have it generate its own wiki page from a map. It seems to be adding a few stray hard returns, but otherwise working OK.
Steve said,
June 18, 2007 @ 12:05 pm
First, kudos for recognizing the value of mindmapping to the organization and structuring of wiki content. I have unsuccessfully attempted to install the map2wiki macro in 2 installations of MindManager 6. I copied the code posted to the wiki page, pasted into the MM’s macro editor, saved and ran the macro. I received a message on each PC that an error occurred while MindManager attempted to access the macro and that I should check to determine whether the macro is valid. Any suggestions or observations that might help me resolve this issue? Thanks.
ActivityOwner said,
June 18, 2007 @ 9:02 pm
Hi Steve — I’d recommend running the macro from within the editor by hitting the “Play” button. That should jump you to the line of code that it is breaking on.
It could be that you brought in some stray text during the cut/paste.
Let me know how it goes.
ActivityOwner said,
June 18, 2007 @ 9:05 pm
You might also want to try the improved “development” version on the wiki:
http://wiki.activityowner.com/index.php?title=Map2wiki-dev.mmbas
It allows you to change the depth to which the macro breaks things into sections, numbered items, and/or bulleted items by editing the constants in the “slevelstrfun” function.
It is not very well documented at this point.
Browse wiki.activityowner.com as a map » ActivityOwner.Com said,
July 6, 2007 @ 8:06 am
[…] The formatting of the ResultsManager dashboard, GyroQ tag, and MindManager macro library tables would need some modifications to flow well in the map format but otherwise it seems to work well. For those interesting in moving/viewing MindManager map content in the reverse direction, there is always map2wiki. […]
Skullkey said,
January 24, 2010 @ 4:34 am
Very nice!
I modified the code on the wiki to convert the child nodes of a topic to either sub-headings or bullets. If all the child nodes are leaves (have no further child nodes of their own), then they are converted as bullets, else sub-headings
admin said,
January 24, 2010 @ 7:36 pm
Thanks — I wrote this early on before having much experience with mediawiki. It looks like there were two versions of map2wiki on the wiki. The more recent one:
http://wiki.activityowner.com/index.php?title=Map2wiki.mmbas
has a 11Nov11 date (which should be 11Nov2007). The one you edited was from several months earlier. I must not have realized it was there. I think there might be benefit in reviewing that one to see if there is anything that can be merged into your improved version.
I’ve unprotected the map2wiki.mmbas file if you want to take a shot at it.