How to convert XML to MindMap?

Question

I have checked many tools like "freemind", "freeplane", etc. Most of them allow exporting to XML file output but I didn't get how to convert an XML to a MindMap.

Any suggestions?

Answer 1

Both, FreeMind and Freeplane, can import from several XML formats but there is no general XML-to-mindmap converter since there are many, many existing XML formats and for each format you need a distinct mapping from the different XML elements, attributes, sub-elements and what more to the different elements (node text, maybe attributes, notes, ...) in a mindmap.

FreeMind and Freeplane use an XML dialect as their own proprietary file format (.mm) so one way to convert some XML to a mindmap would be a XML-to-XML transformation via XSLT or Xquery. Both programs also understand to import indented text like this

root node
  first child
    grandchild
  second child

as a node hierarchy, e.g. when pasted into a map.

References:

• FreeMind/Freeplane file formats

• Existing Import/Export filters of FreeMind and Freeplane

Answer 2

Astah Professional supports XML import/export.

Answer 3

The conversion can be done manually: open in a text editor

  remove <header></header> part
  remove  <Content> and </Content> tag
  replace <Root> and </Root> by  <map> and </map> (case sensitive)
  replace "Title" by "TEXT"

  rename extension from xml to mm

open with vym rather than freeplane