A lot of the value of mindmaps is being able to summarise information just at a high level, and hide the details.
It'd be nice if the mindmaps had the option of keeping the detailed information in the textual representation, but temporarily hiding or showing sub-branches. This would also allow future tools using plantuml as a backing representation to be more interactive - expand/collapse branches via mouse clicks, and keep the "state" of what is hidden/shown in the underlying plantuml text.
I can think of two (possible complementary) ways to implement this:
- allow a setting for the whole map, "max depth" or something, so you could change how deep into the tree is rendered with one setting.
- allow for different syntax for each map node, to indicate if it's children should be hidden
For example, you could enter something like:
@startmindmap
* root
**- child1
*** subchild1
*** subchild2
@endmindmap
Here 'child1' would be shown, but not subchild1 or subchild2. Possibly 'child1' would have an indicator to show there are hidden children.
