Argunet Blog

The latest version of Argunet features new tools that make it easier to organize the debates and to search through debates located on the Argunet-server or on your computer. To help you organize your work you can label the debates using private and non private tags and search for existing debates using a search-engine.

The label-feature allows you to mark the debates with some keywords relevant to your work and to filter the debates by the keywords you have introduced, thus saving you time and unneeded scrolling.

The latest version of Argunet

•  fastens Client-Server communication. Specifically, argument maps are only updated if they have been changed on the server. This fixes the issue that you could hardly work on huge maps online.
• improves the inplace editor for arguments and theses.
• adds context menu options: “Insert conclusion into map”, “Insert premisses into map”
• adds context menus everywhere
• eliminates group-blinking.

After more than a year of work, we proudly present you Argunet 1.0.0! By now Argunet contains every feature you need for rapid and in-depth argument mapping. Thanks to all who participated in this project, especially to our lead developer David Schneider, who spent quite a few weekends working with us on Argunet long after his actual work had been done.

With this release the Argunet development has not come to an end. We already have many ideas for new features, a new task list and even some money for development. Parallel to this, we work on our new homepage, so expect to see something new here very soon…

With Argunet 1.0.0, four extensive tutorials are included in the program’s help, which teach you everything you need to know about argument mapping with Argunet. You will reconstruct a small debate about software patents. You can take a look at the final state of this example debate at the Argunet Server of the FU Berlin. Just login and open the debate “Software Patents” with the reader password “reader”. The last tutorial will show you how to do this. You can copy the arguments from this debate into your own debate to modify or extend them.

We hope that this will help new users to get started. We are planning to create screencasts and upload more example debates to make Argunet even more accessible. If you need more help, please post your question on the Argunet mailing list!

Release Notes:

Fixed:

• All known bugs

New Features:

• Argunet Help: Argument Mapping with Argunet. Four Tutorials in English and German
• E-mail notification: Debate editors are now notified by mail, if someone is applying for a role and users are notified if their debate role has been changed by an debate editor.
• Personal information: You can now change your personal information for your Argunet Server user account and retrieve passwords
• A lot of smaller usability improvements (Warning dialogues, tool tips, …)

Known Issues:

• So far sketched attack and support arrows cannot be copied between debates. This is not bug, it just has not been implemented yet, but has top priority on our task list.
• Some of the old debates on the Argunet Server are not working anymore, because of changes in the new version. If this is the case with one of your online debates, please contact us by mail. Most probably, we can help you!

In the last two months we have focused on getting things done. Instead of wasting time with buggy releases, we have skipped some version numbers and have now reached a state that deserves to be called 0.9.0! This is the last beta version of Argunet. Nearly all features for 1.0 are implemented and the bug list is reduced to a few harmless creatures. We can now work exclusively on making Argunet as stable as possible

The server has also been updated and is now incompatible with older versions of Argunet. If you want to work online, please update your client!

Features:

• Argument editor undo/redo: As long as you edit your argument, you can always undo and redo your last changes. This feature is restricted to the argument editor, because of the optionally distributed structure of Argunet. You cannot undo changes, that possibly are already used by other users, to avoid confusion and errors.
• Recently used debates: Open your recently used debates directly from the “File” menu.
• New alignment tools
• Delete debates
• Interface optimization: We have optimized Argunet’s usability in many respects.

Fixes:

• Nearly all serious known bugs (for exceptions see below).

Known Issues

• On OSX it is currently not possible to create new debates locally. We have already identified the cause and will fix this in the next days.
• In some cases, it is not possible to save edited arguments. This is our last serious bug and we will try to chase it down in the next days.

Features

• Copy and Paste. You can now copy paste arguments between arbitrary
  argument maps by clicking on the Copy and Paste Buttons.
• Apply with password. Debate administrators can now allow access to debates with a debate password (it’s optional, you can still set user rights manually).

This is an “experimental” release with exciting new features. Attention: To implement the new features on the Argunet Server we had to update it. It will not interact with any previous versions of Argunet Client!

Features

• Copy argument maps by dragging arguments from one map to another. This works even between different debates, which means that you can now upload and download arguments or even whole debates!
• Group arguments. The new argument map element “group” allows you to structure complex maps, by visualizing topical areas of it.
• Faster client-server communication
• The wizards for opening and creating debates have been optimized.
• Argument maps look nicer
• Argument maps display, which argument is currently open and active in the argument view
• The connection between argument map editor, argument view and debate view is visualized
• The programm title bar displays the debate title

Fixes

• Deleting of semantic relations

This is a smaller release, that focuses on stability and graphical improvements. Many bugs of the last version have been fixed. Via the welcome page you can now check online for new Argunet updates, so that you can easily keep Argunet up-to-date.

The Argunet team is proud to present an important milestone in Argunet’s development.

Version 0.2.0 contains numerous major enhancements and dozens of bug fixes. Much of
the feed-back we received during the first part of the beta phase was incorporated into
this release. We wish to thank all of our testers and users and hope you will enjoy
this new version of Argunet! Note that the program is still far from being complete
(we are still in beta!) and please continue to contribute feedback.

Here is a brief overview of the most important improvements:

• Complete revision of map editor handling. There is a single tool now - the arrow tool - for all major map construction operations. Click on an empty space and choose from the tool-bar showing at the cursor whether you
  want to create an argument or a thesis. Select a node with a single click. Drag a selected
  node to move it. Single-click a selected node for in-place editing. Drag the mouse on an
  unselected node to draw an arrow; when the button is released a tool-bar shows up to set
  the arrow type. Shift-click for quick multiple selection. Drag on empty canvas for the
  selection rectangle.
• There is a single view for all debate management tasks, including the trash and the
  user rights editor.
• The wizards for creating and loading debates, logging on a server etc. have been restructured
  and disentangled. Server login data can be saved on all platforms.
• You can now check for program updates, download them and update Argunet from within the program.
  Choose “Update…” from the “Help” menu to check for updates.
• Also, optional features extending Argunet can be installed form the Internet from within the
  program. Choose “Search for extensions…” from the “Help” menu to browse the available extensions.
• When views or editors are maximized other views are still available from tool-bars on the sides
  of the screen.
• “Under the hood” the program is much better adapted to the mechanisms of our technological
  platform, the Eclipse RCP.

Fixes

• Major bug fixes relating to deleting green and red arrows
• Semantic relations are established between conclusions and not subconclusions of arguments when defining dialectical relations (logical arrows) between arguments.
• Only owners of debates can change the rights (reader, editor, etc.) of other users. (Note: User rights management of the sokrates server won’t work with previous releases of Argunet.)

Fixes

• A major bug which prevented users from creating arguments and theses locally was fixed.
• Proposition semantics repaired