Cayra is an imaginative, attractive mind/concept mapper that I’ve praised before. It is no longer supported but copies of the installer are still available.
Today, @Kevin added a comment to the Cayra article in Vic’s Picks where he volunteers to pick it up and develop it further, if he can get the source code.
I’ve done some searching and found that the source code was released once under the GPL, but I can’t find a copy of it now. (If that link doesn’t mention it, check out this Freezepage of it.)
Do you know where we may find a copy for Kevin, to the benefit of the mind mapping community? It’s a dotNET application and as Kevin is a “DotNet programmer with a couple of decades of experience”, he may be able to enhance it in important ways, and speed up its performance with larger maps.
I will see if I can get any response through the contact details I have for its original developer, but if someone has a copy of the source code that they grabbed ‘just in case’ at one time, please let us know.
Vic
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Not sure what your intentions are for Cayra. Mine was just to be able to use it. However upon trying to install it I was getting an error message to the tune of “This setup requires the .Net Framework version 3.0.” Even thought I am running Windows 7 with both .Net 3.0 and 4.0 installed. To get around this I simply extracted the MSI file to get the files so that I could run it manually, and it seems to be working correctly, like it always was. Please read the following page for information on how to extract an MSI file: http://thebackroomtech.com/2007/08/23/howto-extract-files-from-a-msi-file-using-the-windows-command-line/. If you want to, you can copy the files into your Program Files and then throw a shortcut into your start menu, to replicate the actions of installing it. I’m not sure if this helps at all, but this is something I experienced and I thought I would share.
Hi Brian,
My intention was just to make it available in future OSs, but Kevin’s was to develop it further. A lot of people like Cayra, and it’s a pity it disappeared, especially as it was briefly open source. Of course, once open source, always open source, but as no one can find the source code, that’s an academic point.
It installed for me on Win XP and Vista with no extra steps required. Haven’t tried on Win 7, so it’s useful to have your hints, thanks. I will copy them over to the Vic’s Picks entry on Cayra.
Vic
(@VicGee on Twitter)
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