Genuine question: how does Org-Mode handle mindmap style information management? By "mindmap" I mean applications such as Freemind, Xmind, etc.?
I recently started to use Xmind after years of Vimoutliner. Both the upsides and downsides are huge for me. For text based approach such as Vim, it is great in fast input, text manipulations, complex searches, integrate with other tools, portability, etc.
But on the other hand in Xmind(or other mindmap applications), being able to see the nodes spreading out on the screen(with colors, icons and whatnot) , drag them around freely into various structures(trees, flow charts, fishbone diagrams, etc.) is really helpful to thinking and manipulation. Also you can attach a host of files(images, videos and stuff like that) to those nodes. I am torn between these two types of approaches, each with their respective advantages.
A couple things. Simple outlining, to me, gets a big part of the mindmapping benefit, at least if you're often collapsing and expanding documents so you get big picture and drill down to smaller. Of course, outlining has basically a single heirarchy and doesn't do what mindmapping does with showing relationships between disparate headings. In Org-mode the "Agenda" is where you would generate, view, and process these kinds of relationships, by doing searches, potentially over hundreds of different files.
The Agenda is one of the two or three major parts of Org-mode (also one part where many/most users barely scratch surface of what it can do). It's definitely a different model of associating connections from what you get in the usual mindmap application. But, I would argue, not less powerful. In fact, I think using the Agenda to find relationships is probably more powerful than mindmapping, but it requires perhaps a bit more effort since the connections aren't directly visible, need to do searches and have items gathered together in Agenda buffer to "see" them. All of this probably makes little sense until you've fully grokked how Org-mode can work (but which probably the majority of Org users never do). Org is one of the most full-featured applications I can think of, both in breadth and depth of features, far more than any mind map application. There is a fairly big learning curve to access all the power, though. (And part of learning curve is not just in learning features, but in learning how to organize your data so you can use features to access, process, and view it in the most helpful ways).
Also, Emacs (and thus Org) do a good job of handling colors, fonts, diagrams, images (can be displayed in Emacs buffer and hidden when node collapses), web and file links (can immediately open in Emacs buffer and/or separate app), there are extensions that allow you to quickly/automatically insert external links into org documents, etc.
There's another (Mac-only) bit of software called Tinderbox. I'm a die-hard Org user -- use it every day, and have written quite a bit of software on top of it. Tinderbox is the only program that occasionally makes me regret committing to Emacs/Org.
There's a (Mac only) notetaking program called Curio with many features, one of which is the ability to convert an outline (which it calls a 'list') to a mind-map or vice-versa: http://www.zengobi.com/products/curio/
I recently started to use Xmind after years of Vimoutliner. Both the upsides and downsides are huge for me. For text based approach such as Vim, it is great in fast input, text manipulations, complex searches, integrate with other tools, portability, etc.
But on the other hand in Xmind(or other mindmap applications), being able to see the nodes spreading out on the screen(with colors, icons and whatnot) , drag them around freely into various structures(trees, flow charts, fishbone diagrams, etc.) is really helpful to thinking and manipulation. Also you can attach a host of files(images, videos and stuff like that) to those nodes. I am torn between these two types of approaches, each with their respective advantages.