Bookvar goes open source

by Telerik Marketing Blog | Comments 10

It is a great pleasure for me to share an exciting news with you. As of today we are opening the source code of Bookvar mind mapping tool. You can find the source on Codeplex right next to other open source initiatives of ours, like Telerik MVC Extensions and CAB Enabling Kit for WinForms.

A few caveats about the source code

There are a few things that you need to know about the source code:

  • Most of the code was written when we were quite new to WPF and we were pioneering all those concepts. Looking back at that time I realize there are things that we would have definitely done better if we had the knowledge we have today.
  • MAF is used instead of MEF. MEF was not available back in the time, but we would like to see the add-in model based on MEF.
  • WF 3.0 is used for the updating process workflow. We would love to see a flowchart implementation with new WF 4.0 capabilities.

Still there are some true gems in the source code like: undo/redo, chat service, services based architecture and others.

Play time

Now go straight to the code and start exploring it. Share your thoughts on our forums and don’t be afraid to contribute.

 

As always we will end this with Bookvar’s mantra: Feel Free To Mind (and contribute).

Telerik_bookvar_logo


Brand Manager | ASP.NET
@PaulinaTsolova

Posted in: wpf open-source free

10 Comments

M
Hi,

Can I ask why you'd choose MEF over MAF?

Thanks,

M
Stefan Dobrev
Hi M,

MAF is usable when you want a strict security sandbox for your addins. Think of extending Office or FireFox for example when each addin should run in its own application domain with its own security model. In order for an addin like this to communicate with the host windows application and extends its UI there is a lot plumbing that you should do and there are always some marshalling and threading issues.

MEF on the other side can live in the host application and is very suitable and flexible for extending rich UI applications. Exactly this is one of the main MEF implementations out there -  in Visual Studio 2010, which is built on WPF 4 and heavily based on MEF.

If you have developed an add-in model with MAF you will definitely already felt the pain. MAF is not easy and makes more problems that it actually solves.

P.S. Mono Addins is also a good option for consideration if you are application needs addins.
Jonx
The web site looks very scarry ;)
Stefan Dobrev
Hi Jonx,

You are right that the design of the site is a little bit old. I'm sure that a brand new redesign built on top of Sitefinity 4 will definitely provide a better experience. We will see when this will see the light.
Antonio
I assume based on the fact that this is an open source project that you intend keeping the use of the MS controls rather than the Telerik WPF controls ?
Stefan Dobrev
Hi Antonio,

We have considered upgrading Bookvar to use latest RadControls for WPF, but we haven't managed to dedicate resources for this. If you would like to do it we can provide you with a free version of our WPF controls that can work in Bookvar. Are you interested?
Antonio
sounds good :)

Once you have used to the Telerik controls for a while, it's pretty hard to go back to using MS.

1 question ,
if it is preferable that I use the free version for bookvar, then can I have two seperate versions
installed at the same time ? My licensed version and the free version ?



Sean Kearon
A good open source mind mapper would be very welcome!

However, I just downloaded and installed it on Win7 and it seems to be broken: it stops working when I run it from the desktop icon and also doesn't present any way to access the program from the start menu.

Can you please advise?

Thanks

Sean



Antonio
Sean I found that running it from the desktop icon it installs never worked either.

I went into the install folder and ran the BookvarWPF.exe - or something similarly named, I'm not close to my machine right now so just look for something named along those lines.

That ran fine for me. I placed a shortcut for that on the desktop and pretty much run it from there all the time. The only thing I have trouble with is opening a .bmm file directly.

I always need to open bookvar and then use open from the application for it to work. Although I suspect that can be easily corrected in the code once it's understood correctly.
Stefan Dobrev
Hi all,

We have also identified this issue on our end. It seems that the boot strapper executable (Bookar.exe) has some issue in Windows 7. We have not identified the root cause for this, but we think that the problem is due to the splash screen implementation we are currently using.

We are going to further look into this issue and provide an updated version of the installer. Until then please use BookvarWPF.exe instead as other users has suggested.

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