Basic principles
Knotview is a visual database for disordered people. Whereas conventional databases requires a lot of planning before entering the first piece of information ever, with Knotview you can enter your data when you happen to have the time and organise the mess later. The functionality of Knotview are very close to mind-mapper programs, such as Vym and Freemind. I used vym for a while and felt that I missed a few features, such as the ability to conveniently work with graphs instead of just trees, or the possibility to sort the nodes according to categories. Knotview allows all that.
Informations are stored as small pieces, called knots. A knot consists of a small title, some links (edges) to other knots, and perhaps an associated text. Knotview is in fact double-headed. There is a graphical interface (knotview), and a (small) database backend (which is called knotdb). The graphical interface allows to browse the database (that is, a pool of knots).
When you start knotview, a window like this one appears :
To be able to do something, a new view must be created. Go in the 'File' menu and select 'New'. The following dialog pops up :
Two file are requested, which may not exist. The first is a knotdb database. Click on the button with the ellipsis (...) and enter a filename (choose an existing one or enter a new name). The second file will be called here a kv-file. It contains all the informations to display a representation of the associated database. Using the same procedure, enter the name of a non-existing file. When this is done, click 'Ok' to complete. A tab now appears in the main window, showing the name of the kv-file you just entered. At the same time, a 'database' file has been created on the disk.
Right-click in the grey area (what is called graphview in the following), and select "Add a knot here" in the menu that pops up. As awaited, a new knot is created on the canvas and appears in the window as a small rectangle containing the text "new knot". It can be moved around with the mouse (click and drag it).
The title can be changed by double-clicking on the knot. Suppose you just want to think of an organisation for the knotview web site. Just call the brand-new knot "knotview web site" :
The knotview web site (will) contain several pages. Two knots representing other pages called "tutorial" and "screenshots" can be created with the same procedure :
In order to show that the page "tutorial" will be accessible from the front page, you can add a link between them. Click on the 'knotview web site' knot. Its frame turns green, indicating that it is now the current knot, then click with the right mouse button on the knot "tutorial" and select Make child of current. An arrow appears between the two knots.
If you would have clicked on Make parent of current the arrow would be oriented the other way. Conventionnaly, knotview considers that when two knots are connected, the arrow points towards the "child" and the other end towards the "parent".
The same can be achieved for the other knot :
Then, you get inspired and want to write down some thoughts about the tutorial. Select 'show knot text' in the popup menu of the 'tutorial' knot. A second window appears, showing a text area. Nothing very sophisticated here, unicode text with bold and italic shapes (use Control-b and Control-i on selected text).
As soon as an associated text exists, a small vertical line appears to the left of the title of the corresponding knot (circled in red in the previous image). It is very easy to spot which knots have an associated text and which have not. Saving all theses changes is achieved by selecting the Save graph entry in the File menu.
Last modified on Mon Jun 11 21:52:16 2007