Labyrinth: old freeware to organise characters and plot

I found this freeware app, labytrinth, years ago. It allowed to create elements (characters, places, objects, etc) and detail information about them. Then you could drag these elements into a wide area where you could set relationships in between them (arrows with little text tags). It also had a function where you could create a table with place / chapters / characters / etc in order to organise your plot and determine who was doing what and where. It was very basic: no colours, no great variety of arrows, but it worked perfectly.

Last year I discovered YEd, an app that allows you to create extremely intricate diagrams, with variety of colours, shapes, arrows, etc, and it can also automaticaly rearrange all the elements. I've started using it because the diagram part is very useful, but, unlike Labyrinth, each element is created from scratch. So, if you decide to change the name of a character, labyrinth would automatically update the name in every diagram which included that element, whereas I have to change each diagram manually in YEd. For this reason, I never got around to transport all the information I had inserted into Labyrinth concerning a Fantasy series I'm planning.

This series comprises of 5 books, with the first four being completely planned by now. I have over one hundred characters with their relationships carefully anotated.

And my computer crashed.

I lost no files because I make regular backups but... I never did make a backup of the app. And now I can't find it online.

So, please, has anyone heard of this app (or freeware programme) and can direct me to a site where I can download it so that I can recover the information I've got locked in the files?

The name of the app is Labyrinth and it creates files with the PLT extension. I have tried PLT viewers with no success at all. Here is an image of a diagram made with the app:

EDIT: I started using it 3 or 4 years ago and both the site and the look of the app gave me the feel that it was something that had been created at least 5 to 10 years before. It runs on Windows.

Conclusion

A helpful user at stack overflow has directed me towards Python and graphviz as a way to read the diagrams. Another way is to manually associate ID numbers to names, events, relationships and slowly (manually) recover the connections. Either way, It'll take time, but I can recover everything.

I'll tell you all one thing: when people say not to bother with backing up software because it's all online and you'll have to go online to get the most up to date version anyway... Only photos you'd rather be forgotten stay online forever, so back everything else up. Better safe than sorry.

Thank you all for your assistance.

posted about 8 years ago

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SC for reinstatement of Monica‭

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