Tale of the Lazy Programmer

Brainstorm

This is a visualizer graph program I wrote. It allows you to arrange information in a brainstorm like graph. You can have multiple root nodes, and have as many child nodes per node as you like. I wrote it because I wanted something to help me keep track of some storylines I was working on, however I never finished writing all of its features.

Right now it is limited in font choice, and you cannot modify much of anything. Aside from making graphs, thats all it does, you cannot convert those into images unless you take a screenshot. The method of manipulating the graph takes a little work to, basically its all done with the mouse and a keyboard modifier key.

On the upside is simple and quick to use once you get used to it, making it good for quickly mapping out thoughts and ideas and their connections. You can even save these maps for later, exported as JSON or a binary file (compressed JSON).

Classification: Hack

Time to write: 8 hours approximately

I eventually wanted to allow this to support images, cross connections, different fonts and colors for each of the nodes. As well revamp and make the key combinations simpler to use. However I haven’t gotten around to it.

How to use: Uncompress and extract, run the executable or jar file. From there, figure it out. If you cannot open one of the example files, it will detail how-to use.

Because of how little QA I did there is considerable problems with this program, probably.

Controls

Editing

  • You will be editing a node automatically on creation of it.
  • CTRL+CLICK on a node to edit it.

Moving

  • CTRL+DRAG a node to move it around by itself.
  • CTRL+SHIFT+DRAG a node to move it and all under it around.

Deleting

  • ALT+CLICK on a node to delete it, all children will be placed under the parent, or made into root nodes.
  • ALT+SHIFT+CLICK a node to delete a tree of nodes, that is a node and all children under it.

Creation

  • CTRL+CLICK on the white canvas to create a root (standalone/starting) node. You can also create a root node if no node is currently selected.
  • CLICK on the white canvas with another selected to add a child node to that node.

Current Limitations

  • Single link downward graph, meaning a node cannot link backward to more then one parent, or sideways to another group (yet)
  • Lines are only straight, and therefore may overlap if setup is too dense. Might improve this later.
  • No ability to color code or change fonts! (yet)
  • Interface may lag on slow computers with larger resolution screens. (Could reduce this with clipping… but lazy)
  • Might become hard to read with higher density graphs.
  • Node depth limited by java stack size. Usually will fail around 60,000 nodes deep. (might fix later)
  • Maximum number of nodes limited to computer memory restrictions, including swap or page file. But you will run into high lag long before this.
  • 2D spacial limitations on the number of boxes that can all be seen clearly within a given area!

Download

(Size: 246.3 KB; 7-Zip File)


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