An option to pin the Collection's position in the Graph View

Feature Requests
1
  • Foreword:
    Users often asked for a more static, “mind map like” Graph.
    On one hand, I understand the wish for it.
    On the other hand I see a lot of problems here.
    – But I believe I have a new concept, worthy an own thread.

My idea combines the well known floating Graph with some stiffness for the basic structure.

WHAT DO YOU RECOMMEND?

Give the user an option, to “nail” the Collection’s positions in the Graph!
That means, that the other Objects are still floating as we know it, but the Collections have fixed positions (but we still can move them around with the mouse, if we want to).

HOW COULD IT BE DONE?

Two possible ways:

  1. (best way) In the right click menu for Collections (or general for all Objects) could be a switch: “Nail Position”.
    If activated, the Object’s position is fixed and will not flow anymore.
    But the user can still move them with the mouse as he wants.
    This would give our map the preferred basic structure.

  2. Or (second best way) without such a switch:
    Automatically fix at least all Collection’s position (but also allow to move them with the mouse).

REAL WORLD USE CASES

In my experience, what really matters for a good orientation:
It’s enough if some specific Points (normally Collections) are fixed, so that the basic structure stays as we designed it.
The rest (normal Objects) can flow as before - it doesn’t matter, it’s even good if they free flow as we know it!

This way, we have a good automatically entanglement from the free flowing Objects, but our basic structure stays always as we designed it.
Therefore there would be always a very good and intuitive orientation in our structure.

RECOMMENDED ALTERNATIVES

ADDITIONAL CONTEXT

From a programmers point of view, I believe it should be easy to implement this way.
The changes are minimal.
Nothing more changes, then that some dots (aka Objects) have fixed positions; the rest behaves (flows) as always.

From the Users point of view, there would be a huge benefit above a completely “mindmap like” behavior where he always must move each and every Object to a specific position by hand to get a good entangled structure: there would be an automatic entanglement for the not “nailed” Objects.
Therefore the Graph would always look good (entangled) but nevertheless with a fixed basic structure - no matter that the less important Objects sometime change their position in this structure a bit.

2

Do you mind if I change “nail” to pin instead?
Also, why limit this to collections only?

3

Nail vs. pin:
I’m no native English speaker.
I would think that “nail” is a good word, but if you know it better than me, then change it to “pin”.

Limiting “nailing” / “pinning” to Collections:
See my whole post, I suggested two ways:
One of my two suggested ways is to give the pinning option for every Object.
This would be my preferred way, but it would be a bit more work for the programmers, because they must implement a switch in the GUI.

My second way (Collections only) avoids the need for the switch, so that the programmer can implement the feature with ease in two minutes, without touching the GUI.
It would already help a lot if it works for Collections. Because they are the prominent points in the Graph.
They are like the main branches of a mindmap.

But of course I would prefer to have the feature for every visible dot in the Graph.