Views tool and My Cmaps creating problem

[ScottyDM]

Greetings!

It's quite possible I'm doing something wrong as I'm new to Cmap, although I did successfully create a couple of simple concept maps.

My immediate problem is that the Views tool/window refuses to show some folders that lie within the My Cmaps space. I've found this topic: Files in "My Cmaps" doesn´t update while Cmaptools runs, but that's not my problem. I've restarted Cmap several times; tried "Edit/Refresh" and F5; opened the "missing" cmap files by doubling clicking them and then tried Save As, but I get the error, "Resource not found (it may have been moved or deleted)"; and I even tried creating a new folder with the same name, but get a warning that the folder already exists -- it does.

I'm running CmapLite v5.03 on Windows 2000 Pro (all the latest service packs and patches) with 3/4 gig of RAM. I think/hope I'm running the copy of Java you supplied, but I do have Java from Sun and that updates itself regularly.

Why these files are missing is because in my world Cmaps are not the center of the universe -- projects are. Now everyone is different, but I create a folder for each project, subfolders to organize my files, then I toss in every type of document necessary to support/create that particular project. That is, I do not segregate files by file type. I recently "lost" my Cmap files because I copied one of these subfolders (named "version_0-4-4") and renamed the copy "version_0-4-5" (by using File Manager). Cmap refuses to see this new folder. Yes, all these folders are inside My Cmaps.



There seems to be a fundamental flaw in the design of Cmap, which is centered around My Cmaps and the Views tool. Fortunately I decided to try Cmap with a subset of projects. So after installation I went into Edit/Preferences and changed My Cmaps to point to a folder already full of folders and files -- approximately 750 folders and 2450 files (not counting the 95 folders and 940 files Cmap added). First, it took Cmap about three minutes to parse it all. Now to be fair those folders were on a different machine that was connected to our LAN via WiFi, so it was slow.

But the more I use Cmap, the more I ask myself what's the point?

Not, what's the point of Cmap and concept maps in general -- but what is the point of the Views tool? And especially, what's the point of parsing and caching all of My Cmaps every time the tool starts? What a huge waste of time, bandwidth, disk IOPs, and CPU cycles.

Now imagine if I'd set My Cmaps to my E:\~ScottyDM folder. Cmap would try to parse 4,500 folders and 122,000 files and that would be insane (and I don't have all that much compared to some people). And how many of those hidden folders and stupid gifs would I gain? Yet, if I start to use Cmap with other types of projects I will need to change My Cmaps to a broader scope.

And why start with Views? The whole point of Cmap should be concept maps, not a bunch of folders. Open with that big (unnamed) window where we can create, edit, and view concept maps. The only time I care about something like Views is when I need to do File/Save Cmap as. By the way, where is the File/Open a Cmap? Okay, strictly speaking it's not needed because you have Views open all the time. But that idea is flawed. File/Open a Cmap is a fundamental operation and Views should only support that. For local operations we don't need Views unless you want to open or "save as" a file.

In the fourth paragraph of the third post in How to open my cmap without opening first the Views window ? maxand wrote about a "document-centric approach". Cmap lacks a document-centric approach.

In Find in Views not working hferst wrote that when he created a folder within his My Cmaps folder (but using File Manger rather than Views to create it) then opened his Cmap file by double-clicking it, Edit/Find in Views refused to work. It doesn't work for me either. Again, the problem seems to be the flawed idea that Views is the file manager and must always have and maintain control over it's little patch of disk space. Sorry, other apps exist. And every O.S. I know of has a file manager. Why did you guys reinvent this particular wheel? And with your parsing and caching it turned out to be a poor implementation of a file manager.

Then rcarvajal answered hferst and said Cmap does not work outside of the My Cmaps space. It should. It's an insanely great idea to be able to control where an app will start when you use File/Save As or File/Open, and My Cmaps does that. But that should be only a starting place not a prison.

Parsing and caching is killing the usefulness of Cmap, and generating a bajillion little gif files doesn't help. Here's something to think about. I do not care about anything that exists outside the folder I'm in right now. Don't parse it and don't cache it and don't assume Cmap is the only app that will ever touch that space.


What about Shared Cmaps in Places? Ahhh, now there's a good reason to have Views. And in another post (didn't save the tab) someone suggested you could drag and drop files in and out of Views. So for Shared Cmaps in Places this drag and drop could replace FTP and would be very nice for collaborative projects -- that is if drag and drop works over remote servers. It does, I hope (I didn't try it).

But, parsing and caching the whole tree of a remote server is and even dumber idea than doing it locally. Especially in a collaborative environment.


From what little I've done so far, concept maps are awesome. And Cmap is pretty cool for creating and viewing them. Too bad your development seems to have driven off into the weeds with the Views thing.

When might this be fixed? Looks like not for awhile. But please prioritize fixing how Views works.

Thanks a million.

S~

[ScottyDM]

I have fixed my immediate problem -- I shut down Cmap, deleted all the "project.idx" files in the folder I'm using as "My Cmaps" (my actual folder name is different), and then restarted Cmap. It rebuilt all the "project.idx" files and can now see all my sub-folders.


There is a bug here -- "Edit/Refresh" doesn't. Cmap relies on the sanctity of all those "project.idx" files, which is based on the assumption that nothing but Cmap will every touch the "My Cmaps" folder structure. While this is a reasonable assumption on a dedicated Cmap server, it's not on a local folder, i.e. "Cmaps in My Computer."

Rather than fix this bug, my suggestion is to eliminate all those "project.idx" files. Thus, this no longer fits in "Troubleshooting (IHMC CmapTools)," but now belongs in "Suggestions."

I hope someone else will be able to benefit from my workaround.

S~

[acanas]

Hi,

Yes, CmapTools was designed with the idea that anything within the Views is only manipulated by CmapTools itself?

Why? Because CmapTools makes it very easy to link resources to the Cmaps. Each resource has a unique ID, for resources like images or videos, these id's are stored in the project.idx files. Now, what this provides is the facility to move resources around without the links being broken, in contrast with using pathnames for links. So, if you have all your resources already linked to your map, and decide to reorganize them into folders, if you move them using the Views, you don't have to change the links, everything continues to work. Trying doing that at the file system level and you'll have all the links broken. When you don't know much about links (e.g. naive users, schools, etc.) or if you are working with 100's a Cmaps and thousands of resources (e.g. look at http://cmex.ihmc.us) it makes life a lot easier.

So, yes, the tradeoff was ease of use in creating knowledge models (collections of Cmaps and linked resources about a particular topic) but having to do the manipulation of resources within the Views window.

If you understand this point of view, you'll understand why we scan all files at startup, and what the project.idx file does, since without it there would be no way to provide the easy manipulation of resources around the Views' folders. In fact, the resource-id for each resource is unique. You can move it to a CmapServer (manually, if you 'copy' it it gets a new resource-id), and using the search tool (or even Google, if the CmapServer is indexed) you are able to locate it. We have had cases where we have had links broken to Cmaps that were moved around to other servers at the file system level and were able to restore it using these id's.

So, if we remove the project.idx files as you suggest, there is no way we can support the environment that makes it easy to manipulate all these resources, re-organize them, etc., without having links broken all the time. This makes it very easy for non-technical users (including, teachers, elementary schools students, etc.) to build linked knowledge models very easily.