(old)Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

G'day Puppians,

SciPlore is open-source and the latest incarnation of FreeMind Scholar. It's particularly naff because it enables visual organization of your PDF files in a highly-modifiable "mind map" format. http://www.sciplore.org/software/sciplore_mindmapping/. From there, you can take and record notes and tags, highlight important sections of text in your PDF - and generally construct a dynamic database of ideas and sources perfect for writers, students, researchers and thinkers of all description...

(For similar needs already outlined in Puppy forums, see FreeMind examples like http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... 91&t=42058, and http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... 91&t=29321.)

To take full advantage of SciPlore's referencing capabilities for the creation of journal publications etc., it is designed to integrate with JabRef (etc) and BibTeX key structures, for in-text referencing and bibliography formatting in Word or OpenOffice. (And Zotero. The possibilities are endless.)
It needs at least Java 1.6 - I'm not sure of what other dependencies might be needed in Puppy (I've only been using the .exe in eXPectorant). The SciPlore developers have provided the sourcecode and a tar.gz version - but there is no support or instructions provided for its successful implementation in Linux.

Would someone with experience and interest like to be the first reported to have it running in Puppy? It shows real promise as a research tool and would be a fine addition to the Puppy stable.

At present, puplets like Bruno 2.0 (http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=53119 with wine and java in 4.3.1) look like plausible environments for the Windows version, but it would be good to have a SciPlore pet or sfs native to Puppy. Suggestions or volunteers warmly appreciated,

Thanks for your consideration.

You can find it here
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=57307

Maybe good if a Moderator merge the two threads then?

robwoj44 wrote:You can find it here
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=57307

robwoj44, Dziekuje!

I just gave your pet a quick run-through using gposil's dpup477 (frugal install). At first the dependencies registered fine, and there were no warning messages. "Sciplore Mindmapping" appeared in the "Graphical" menu category, not where the install dialogue said - but that is just cosmetics. No warning messages when clicked - but no other response, either. Then installing your recommended Java 1.6 pet had SciPlore loading beautifully, and it was "game on".

I ran a quick test and unfortunately came across some problems that were not your fault but seem to be Linux-wide, according to the SciPlore team*. PDF's are incorrectly recognized by SciPlore as being encrypted, and I've attached a screenshot of the greyed-out "Tools>Toggle Crypted/Encrypted" option that cannot be modified by the user.
I also threw some images onto the map, and these did not open correctly in mpaint when clicked. However, Word docs and other document file formats opened correctly and very fast in AbiWord.

[EDIT 19th May 2011: I've removed a comment here relating to the then little-supported Linux version of SciPlore, as stated even on their current homepage. With more familiarity with java and Puppy, it appears now that installation problems may be more likely to how Puppy organizes its java libraries - I've had similar problems with Wine and Java detection - and not to any design problems within SciPlore-Linux per se]

I noted that the SciPlore.exe file was also installed - perhaps the installation of a Wine or WineLite pet might be a satisfactory workaround for Puppy users who wish to get the most from SciPlore.

Cheers!


[EDIT: What I meant was that it was already reported somewheres and responded to by their Team as a known problem, but I can't find it again to confirm]