When links can’t be tapped or drawn visually (such as when it’s made impractical by concepts being far apart, or impossible by only using a keyboard), interacting with and creating them becomes more indirect. Through the concepts they link.

Up to nine concepts at a time can be ’tagged’ with a digit, 1-9. Select the concept you wish to tag, and tap = (Equals; or you can bring up the concept context menu and select ‘Tag’).

A digit tag will appear on the concept. Once the nine tags are in use, tagging again will cycle the digits, the earliest of the nine most recent concepts losing its tag.

Select Concept(s)

The simplest use of these digits is to pan the view. Tapping a digit key will center the corresponding concept in the view.

Holding the Shift key while tapping digit keys allows toggling selection of multiple concepts.

Create Link(s)

A link or chain of links can be created between tagged concepts.

Hold down Ctrl to begin, and tap the tag digit for the start concept, followed by that for the end concept.

Tapping more than two tag digits before releasing Ctrl creates a chain of links.

If you want to create ‘breaks’ in the chain, you can interrupt it (while still holding Ctrl) by tapping 0, in which case the next tapped tag digit will indicate the start rather than end concept for the next link.

Via Context Menu

The canvas context menu can also be used to link the two most recently tagged concepts (from the second-last to the last).

Select a Link

If you wish to select a link between two concepts, first tag the concepts (as described above) and hold Alt while tapping the tag digit for the start and end concepts.

If there are multiple links between two concepts, repeating the Alt gesture above will cycle through them.