SpeedReader — Faster Version of MindReader Available
MindReader was running a big sluggishly on my MindManager maps, so went through it with a fine tooth comb and identified where it was spending its time. I made several tweaks so that it can load its options faster and skip over sections of code when not needed and avoid branches of keywords if the text being processed clearly didn’t have them. For example we can avoid looking for the variations on “start in x days” if the text lacks “start in”. Note that this trick is English specific so if you have customized your configuration map to another language you will want to turn off the “englishspeedup” option.
With this changes my “m tag” processing of a ResultsManager dashboard item dropped from 10 seconds to less than 2 seconds.
If you are a frequent MindReader user, you will want to download the latest Beta setup.exe and upgrade. Note that the wiki has links to a “Beta” and “stable” version. I move the “beta” to “stable” when it survives a week or two without changes. Often the new “beta” will be the less buggy of the two, but it will occasionally (OK often) have unanticipated issues. This way the user can fall back to the other if a problem emerges with one of them.
I also found several attributes that were not being sent to the underlying maps when MindReader marked up dashboard maps using the m tag. If you haven’t upgraded recently, make sure your also overwrite your GyroQ.ini file with the updated version so that the unneeded “sendchanges” command in earlier versions of the m tag are removed.
Entries 
ActivityOwner said,
February 16, 2009 @ 11:59 am
Whoops — The setup uploaded yesterday didn’t have the full code speed-up implemented. The latest setup.exe on the wiki is the fast version. The biggest speed increases happen after you have used the program once on a given map as it caches maps in memory.
Ron said,
February 17, 2009 @ 9:11 am
The code at http://wiki.activityowner.com/index.php?title=Ao_next_action_analysis.mmbas is actually the ao_mindreader_common code. I would fix it if I could…
Ron said,
February 17, 2009 @ 11:20 am
Also, we seem to have lost the ability to set Priorities on Tasks via Outlinker and MindReader. I ran through a group of emails with Outlinker this morning and included the priority I wanted to assign in the brackets along with other information (ie. [p1]). The priorities did not show up on my maps. I also tried applying the priorities using the m tag and still nothing.
Chris said,
February 17, 2009 @ 11:27 am
Ron,
I just tried marking a task with P1 via the m tag and it worked.
ActivityOwner said,
February 17, 2009 @ 8:42 pm
Ron — It certainly does make the code faster if you just ignore keywords :-). Sorry about that – I had moved some lines of code around late in the upgrade which caused it to always skip over the branches it was trying to speed up. I just uploaded a corrected version. Also — thanks for the catch on the macro library issue with naa — I fixed it.
Bernhard said,
February 18, 2009 @ 6:16 pm
Hi,
I ran the macro NAA and experienced the following error.
Quote
The sequence {send;run:macro:AO\ao_next_action_analysis.mmbas} returned an error:
Message from MindManager 7:
A runtime error occurred while executing the macro … \ao_next_action_analysis.mmbas
Unquote
Any idea what goes wrong and how to fix it?
Thanks for the help.
Bernhard
ActivityOwner said,
February 18, 2009 @ 9:25 pm
Hi Bernhard — Can you open the ao_next_action_analysis.mmbas file in your macro editor with the dashboard up and hit play. A more specific error message will show up in the lower left corner of the window.
Bernhard said,
February 19, 2009 @ 6:39 am
The macro stops at the the line
Set tt = FeasibilityTopic.AddSubTopic(“You have the most work to do in the ” & t.Text & ” context”)
and in the lower left corner I can see the following
(10094) ActiveX Automation: Object var is ‘Nothing’
Hope that helps.
Bernhard said,
February 19, 2009 @ 6:40 am
Sorry, one more. I am running the version dated 15Feb09.
Thanks
ActivityOwner said,
February 19, 2009 @ 8:00 am
Thanks Bernhard — That is very helpful. I can see where the problem is occuring now and have uploaded a new version of the program that should avoid it, but I’m not sure why it is happening.
By any chance are you using it on a German version of ResultsManager? This would seem to be the most likely cause of the problem here. NAA is very English-centric in the way that it identifies branches and won’t work well without some modifications. If this is the case, can you send me the daily actions dashboard template? This would enable me to revise the program to look for the German text it needs.
Bernhard said,
February 19, 2009 @ 11:33 am
Thanks for the quick answer. I am using a Dell laptop bought in Germany but with English XP preinstalled by Dell. All other software (Office, MindManager 7 and ResultsManager and GyroQ) is also English. All language settings are English but the keyboard and setting are German (obviously).
The branches in ResultsManager are in English. If you can send me an email address I will send you the dashboard template. It is a customized dashboard.
Thanks for posting a new version. This makes it beyond the line that caused the problems last time but still drops out just a couple lines later at:
FeasibilityTopic.AddSubTopic(“You have ” & mapcount(mostmap) & ” actions in ” & Mid(maplinks(mostmap),InStrRev(maplinks(mostmap),”\”)+1,Len(maplinks(mostmap))-InStrRev(maplinks(mostmap),”\”)-4)).CreateHyperlink(maplinks(mostmap))
with the error message
(10620) Invalid function argument value.
Sorry for causing so much trouble.
ActivityOwner said,
February 19, 2009 @ 12:28 pm
Hi Bernhard — NAA is designed specifically to work with the default Gyronix ResultsManager Daily Action Dashboad (Power User). My guess is that your custom dashboard lacks the main branches it is looking for to harvest the data it needs.
Is your custom dashboard a small variation of the daily action dashboard? If so I may be able to tweak the code to be compatible. You can send it to info at activityowner com.
Ron said,
February 20, 2009 @ 8:58 am
Thanks for the quick fixes – all appears to be well now. I do like your new technique “Ron — It certainly does make the code faster if you just ignore keywords :-)” – LOL.
Tom said,
March 26, 2009 @ 9:08 am
Hi,
So finally I decided to take the plunge with SpeedReader. On the Wiki it states “These tools are designe to work with MindManager 6.2.399, 7.0.429, or 8 and GyroQ Professional 1.9.4.7 or 2. Version 1.9.4.9 is not compatible” but when I try to install, the program says MM7 or MM8, “Other versions not supported”.
How can I install to MM6?
Can I download this AO package apart and install manually?
Thanks,
Tom
ActivityOwner said,
March 26, 2009 @ 10:51 pm
Hi Tom — I had forgotten the setup didn’t have a version 6 option. I think this may have been due to just not having any beta testers using it. I don’t recall any specific issues. For the tool itself, the “k” tag uses a specifc v7+ “copy as hyperlink” feature that needs to be replaced with an older version of the macro from the wiki.
The reason the installer needs to know the version I believe is so that it can look in the registry to figure out where the My Maps directory is. I just edited the installer script to add a version 6 option. Please give it a try and let me know how it goes. If it doesn’t work, I can upload an updated version of “AO-Pack.zip” that can be unzipped manually.
A big thanks again goes to Hans who created this installation script. As big as a help as it has been to MindReader/MTC/NAA installation, getting me rolling with it has really transformed what can be done with OutLinker.