Dot

Dot is a program from the graphviz package to draw graphs from the command line. It can, among other usages, be used to create MindMaps.

Mindmap

A mindmap created by the program dot.

Here's how you create a mindmap with dot:

source.txt

digraph "Wikimap" {
  "OS" -> "OpenSource"
  "OpenSource" -> "Linux"
  "OpenSource" -> "BSD"
  "BSD" -> "NetBSD"
  "BSD" -> "FreeBSD"
}

create the graphical map

dot -Tps -o mindmap.ps source.txt

view the graphical map

konqueror mindmap.ps

remove arrows

A mindmap created by the program dot.

Here is how you draw a mindmap without arrows, you use "arrowhead=none":

source.txt

digraph "Wikimap" {
  "cloud" -> "public" [arrowhead=none]
  "cloud" -> "private" [arrowhead=none]
  "cloud" -> "data" [arrowhead=none]
  "cloud" -> "virtual machines" [arrowhead=none]
  "data" -> "ownCloud" [arrowhead=none]
  "public" -> "ownCloud" [arrowhead=none]
}

create the graphical map

$ dot -Tpdf -o mindmap.pdf source.txt

view the graphical map

$ xdg-open mindmap.pdf

Layout

You can use several layouts: dot, twopi, neato and circo. Here is the neato layout:

Sourcecode for the above: digraph "Wikimap" {

 layout=neato
 overlap=false
 "OS" -> "OpenSource"
 "OpenSource" -> "Linux"
 "OpenSource" -> "BSD"
 "BSD" -> "NetBSD"
 "BSD" -> "FreeBSD"

}

See also

• gnupLot