iThoughtsHD is, in my opinion, the best mind-mapping app available on the iPad, which, by fiddling around with the settings, can also become a powerful text-based outliner. In his script, Rob focused on native iThoughts export. The AppleScript is useful if you want to run the script every once in a while the shell version is recommended if you want to run everything without having to click on dialog boxes. The Python version can be used to run the script from the shell or automatically using, say, Hazel the AppleScript requires manual interaction as it’ll ask you to specify a filetype for exported documents and a location in the Finder. To sum up, the script is available in two versions: an AppleScript and a Python script. General instructions are available in the official thread at the OmniGroup forums. But there’s so much more the script can do if you start customizing it. Unlike other solutions, Rob’s script looks directly into the SQL OmniFocus database cache to get its data – quite a feat on its own. I tested Rob’s script with my OmniFocus database, and after several improvements he made to the script, I feel comfortable enough with linking to it here.

Then, yesterday, Rob released a new version of the script which adds native iThoughts support and plain text exporting options, as well as settings for colors, templates, and filters. RobTrew picked up the task and, on the OmniGroup Forums, released an initial script to export from OmniFocus to OPML. In the post, he wrote that, however, he was reaching to the Mac community to see if anyone would be able to build a more powerful and reliable solution with filters, color options, and more control on the exported data. A few weeks ago, Michael Schechter found a way to export an OmniFocus for Mac database to OPML to visualize it in mind-mapping apps like iThoughts and MindNode.

Ithoughts ipad tutorial