Brainstorm version 0.1
======================

Brainstorm is an interactive tool for creating and editing concept maps,
as part of a brainstorming process.
For more details see http://activityworkshop.net/software/brainstorm/

This program, including source code, texts and designs
is copyright activityworkshop.net and distributed according to the
terms of the Gnu GPL (see the included license.txt file).

Brainstorm is currently only at version 0.1 so there is plenty of room for
improvement.  For the suggested enhancements see the included todo.txt file.


Requirements
------------
In addition to this zip file, Brainstorm also requires the following:
   Python runtime (at least version 2.5)
   Qt libraries (version 4)
   PyQt libraries (matching the above two)

All these requirements are also Free software and can be downloaded
for Linux, Mac and Microsoft systems.


Running
-------
To run Brainstorm, the command to run it depends on whether you have unpacked
the zip file or not.
For Python 2.6, do not extract the contents of the zip file, but just use
the following command from the console:
    python brainstorm_0.1.zip

For Python 2.5, you should extract everything from the zip file into a new
folder and then use the following command from the console:
    python brainstorm.py


Controls
--------
You can start from a blank brainstorm or by loading a previously-saved one.
To add a new node, right-click on the background and select "Create new node".
This node will not be connected to any others.
To add a new node which is already connected to an existing one, right-click on the
existing node and select "New node attached to...".
To add a new connection between two existing nodes, right-click the first node, select
"New connection to..." and then left-click the second node.

To zoom in on the picture, press "+".  To zoom out again, press "-".
To randomize the positions of all nodes, press the space bar.

You can save your work as a storm file (in xml format), either including the current
positions of each node or without.  If you don't save the node positions, then they
will be randomized when you next load the storm file.
You can also save a graphical version of the current layout in svg format, so that
you can modify and edit the picture using tools like Inkscape.  Note however that
Brainstorm is unable to load svg files so don't forget to save the file as a storm
as well.

