sprig

Mind maps for Typst. A hub, branches growing out of it, a card at the end of each one.

The hub is a polygon with exactly as many sides as there are branches, and each branch leaves from the midpoint of its own side — so the stalk meets a flat edge square-on instead of sprouting from a corner. That is the default; a rectangle with twelve branches is one keyword away.

No dependencies, no plugin binary: everything is drawn with Typst's own curve.

#import "@preview/sprig:0.1.0": *

#mindmap([*Le verbe*],
  branch(title: [Groupe])[1ᵉʳ, 2ᵉ, 3ᵉ.],
  branch(title: [Temps])[Simples, composés.],
  branch(title: [Mode])[Indicatif, subjonctif.],
  branch(title: [Voix])[Active, passive.],
)

What you can change

hub	sides, hub-shape ("box", "rounded", "circle", "ellipse", a number, or your own function), hub-ratio, hub-fill / hub-ink / hub-text
leaves	shape — fifteen built in, or a function — palette (six sets or an array), weight, tint, leaf-fill, leaf-ink, icon
branches	stalk, stalk-tip, wave, waves, bend, start, spread
placement	dist, dx, dy, at (compass points), angle
sub-leaves	children (nest them again for a third rank), children-at, spread, child-dist, child-width
cross-links	links: (link(0, 2, label: [implies]), ..) — a dashed curve with an arrow, over the cards
modes	dir (ltr / rtl / auto), theme: "print", rough / roughness

mindgrid lays the cards on a grid you choose instead of a ring, and runs the branches behind whatever is in the way — or round it, with route: true.

The illustrated guide

gallery/guide.pdf shows every option with the code beside it, after the manner of visual-tikz. gallery/cover.typ draws the package's own syntax as a mind map — the obvious thing to make with a mind-map package, and a fair test of it.

Beyond the tree

A mind map is a tree; the ideas in it rarely are.

#mindmap([Cycle],
  links: (link(0, 1, label: [forme]), link(3, 0, via: "inside")),
  branch(title: [Évaporation], icon: [▲], children: (
    branch(title: [soleil], children: (branch[énergie],)),
  ))[..],
  ..)

link draws the association without breaking the hierarchy — dashed, over the cards, so it reads as an annotation rather than as part of the skeleton. children nests as deep as you like: three ranks are laid out, each fanning around its own parent on the bearing that parent has from its parent, so the tree always opens outward.

Sizing

leaf-width is a maximum, not a fixed width: each card is measured against its own text and shrinks to fit, floored at min-width. That is what stops a one-word leaf from being handed the full width and breaking Évaporation across two lines. The hub is sized from its title the same way — and it is inscribed in an ellipse rather than a circle, because a line of text is almost always wider than it is tall while a circle grows in both directions at once. hub-round: true restores the circular hub. The ring is pushed out to clear whatever size the hub turned out to be.

Not every shape fills its box. A speech balloon spends its bottom sixth on the tail, a shield's flanks start a fifth of the way up, torn chews its foot into teeth, banner bites a dovetail out of each end. Each shape therefore declares the margin its ornament eats, and the card both grows by it and insets its text — otherwise a line hangs out through the balloon's tail, which is exactly what the Arabic example used to do.

mindgrid keeps fixed cell widths on purpose — in a grid, lining up is the point — so an ornamented card there insets its text rather than growing sideways; its height still follows its contents.

Notes

• Colours are removed, not desaturated, in print. A grey wash still costs toner and still greys the text, so the branches are told apart by their outlines. The stalk is thinned too: a black area weighs far more than a coloured one of the same size.
• Under rtl the branches run anticlockwise, so the reading order goes right-to-left round the map. Compass names work in English, abbreviated, and in French.
• hub-text follows the fill's luminance rather than being white come what may — white on a pale hub is invisible.

What is in the box

gallery/guide.pdf     the illustrated manual — every option, shown
gallery/cover.pdf     the map of sprig's own syntax
examples/basic        a first map
examples/subleaves    a leaf that becomes a hub, compass placement
examples/rich         icons, three ranks, cross-links, a free-form hub
examples/print        the ink-saving theme
examples/arabic       right-to-left
examples/typst        a full map: Typst itself, documentation style
examples/relatifs-ar  a full map in Arabic: signed-number arithmetic
examples/grammar-en   a full map in English: parts of speech, sketched

The last three are complete, real maps rather than option demos; the guide reproduces all three with the source that made them.

Licence

MIT.