I just noticed that Frank Merenda at uptime has provided reviews of many of the same tools I’ve tried out in my search for the perfect data organizer . Presently, I tend to use freemind (Java based) and would like to use treeline (faster and based on python) but it lacks supports for the way I would like to work.

When I’m creating my data structure I want to be able to say “this node is a title” and “that one is an author.” Freemind allows me to do this in an extemporaneous but awkward way (associating nodes with a color that I associate with a type). Treeline has even better support for data-types but presumes that the author already knows the structure of the data being entered beforehand. I want to sling nodes and arcs and organize and type as I go, but also have the flexibility of leaving things untyped, or re-typing later on.

So I’m still looking.