Draw mindmaps in vim
When we deal with complex IT infrastructures it is important that we are able to visualize it. This holds true not only for IT topics but for our entire lives. For a long time I was searching for an easy tool that would meet my needs. I tried Freemind, VYM, xmind, Libreoffice Draw and drawio and none of them appealed to me. Finally one day I discovered that it was much more easier than I had thought.
There is a software package called Graphviz which can draw directed and undirected graphs. There are two basic elements in a graph: Nodes and Edges. Edges connect individual nodes. Let’s draw a simple mindmap.
digraph {
a->b;
a->c;
a->d;
b->e;
b->f;
b->g;
d->h;
d->i;
d->j;
j->k;
j->l;
j->m;
c->n;
c->o;
}
We save our mindmap as mindmap.dot. Now we compile it with neato.
neato -Tpng mindmap.dot | feh -
It is as simple as that. Why would we ever need a mouse to place Nodes and Edges on a drawing plane?
