UtilityPanels for FreePlane

UtilityPanels is a script that creates integrated panels in the Freeplane interface.

Features

Panels

Recent nodes panel

• A list with recently selected nodes.

Pinned nodes panel

Pinned nodes are saved on FreePlane restarts

Quick Search panel

Results are highlighted everywhere: in the panels, in the inspectors, and in the map:

Inspector

• Inspector tooltip:

• Infinite inception navigation in the Inspector tooltip:

• Freeze Inspectors

The inspectors have a freeze option, so the user can easily do drag and drop operations, or navigate the map while the inspectors stay on screen.

Other Features

• Drag and Drop operations It's possible to do drag and drop (move nodes) between itens in the panel, nodes in the map, and vice versa.

• Clicking the panel item navigates to the node.

Other interesting aspects:

• The panel follows the active tab

• deleting a node in the map, immediately deletes the item in the list:

• the nodes get marked with a ⚠️ sign when clicking on them will lead to a Jump Out in the current map view:

• The panels are transparent:

Current limitations that will be improved:

• I don't use multiple maps, so I don't know how the script behaves in that situation. I know that there are limitations. For example, the navigation doesn't work across multiple maps.
• Drag and drop operations are limited to the Move operations. In the future, I will add the others, like the option to create connectors.
• The auto update of the Quick Search panel doesn't react to all changes in the map (for example, deleting a node).

How to make the Quick Search panel work

It needs integration with Jumper. I created a fork of Jumper that allows this integration.

I will make it easier in the future, but now it's necessary to

• uninstall the Jumper add-on and delete the folder that it leaves inside the user folder/addons. Don't worry, you will be able to use Jumper normally.
• download the branch called dev in my fork (go into Code/Download ZIP)
• unzip it into a folder
• in Freeplane, go into Preferences…->Plugins->Scripting->Script classpath: Additional directories containing classes and/or JARs and set here the path of the folder above

Now, to make the usual Kumper start, you need to run this script: lilive.jumper.Jumper.start()

If Jumper, or the Quick Search panel are not showing any results, then see this.

Todo

Features

• Drafts Panel. A panel to store nodes that the user wants to keep as a draft, instead of including in the map.
• Post it panel. A type of panel that is a simple text panel where the user can keep some text. It then will have buttons to quickly tranform the text into a node to be inserted as a child of the select node, or be transformed into a draft node and included in the Draft panel.
• Querry search panel. A type of panel where the user can create a search criteria, and it will show all nodes that match that criteria, and keep updating that list.
• Backlinks list: see freeplane/freeplane#485 (reply in thread)
• Breadcrumbs panel: see freeplane/freeplane#2145
• Tags panel: see freeplane/freeplane#1996 (comment)
• Add a frozen sliding panel to the top history panel. See: #5

Implementation

• easy positioning of the panels, with anchoring
• more items in the list; and scrollbars on hover
• buttons on the panel to do things like minimize, close, resize, move etc
• avoid symbols that can have rendering problems. See issue freeplane/freeplane#1752 (reply in thread).
• improve the inspector layout: see #4

Disclaimer

Some of the features modify the information in the map, so do extensive testing before using the script on important maps. And create backups.