Freemind mindmaps are saved as XML files. So it's possible to manage a collection of Freemind mindmaps with a version control system. Here we choose popular Git.

But Freemind mindmap xml file contains attributes like CREATED, MODIFIED which are timestampes. Such timestampes does not make too much sense for a knowledge mindmap, and bring noise to version control.

freemind-mmx solve this issue with a hacked version Freemind.

This project solves the issue through git clean filter. A program is used to apply filters on the mindmap xml file.

• Remove CREATED and MODIFIED node attributes.
  • Attribute ID is also removed. It's not needed when there is no node link in the mindmap.
• Decode unicode characters which are encoded like 找.
  • This improves the readiblity of mindmap XML file.

It has been verified that Freemind can open the filterred mindmap file well.

echo "*.mm filter=freemind" >> .gitattributes

git config filter.freemind.required true

git config filter.freemind.clean bin/mmclean.tcl
git config filter.freemind.smudge cat

Default filter program is implemented with Tcl - my favourite script language.

My another Freemind related project freefind-plus which focus on Freemind mindmap conversion.