Argumentative

Similar to a mindmapping utility whose purpose is to help you jolt down ideas, debate them with your team and organize brainstorming sessions, Argumentative is a Windows application that focuses on arguments. It provides a graphical interface for easily noting arguments, premises, reasons, objects and other arguments for backing up the reasons and objections.

The program is free and open-source, featuring intuitive options for making all of this happen. It can be quickly installed on the computer and, during setup, you can include the source code, program documentation and dictionaries, as well as make associations with the project files saved with this tool (.AXL and .RTNL).

From the look of the interface, it's quite obvious that Argumentative hasn't received updates for a considerable amount of time. But what it lacks in appearance makes up in a well-structured layout, where it's easy to spot the settings and figure out what they're in charge with.

The left side of the main window shows a tree view of the argument's main premise, reason, argument for backing up the reason, objection, and helper for the objection. The descriptions can be edited to better suit whatever project you are working on. Also, you can add as many reasons, objections and helpers as necessary. They can be moved up and down to rearrange the argument's tree.

It's possible to add comments to any of the three elements, change the author and date of creation, use a search function when putting together a tree with numerous branches, zoom in and out, make the tree colorful or black and white (useful for printing), and change the orientation.

Argumentative puts a spellchecker at your disposal. It also has a tool for adding or removing full stops from each element. Besides saving the project to file to later open it and pick up where you left off, you can export it Microsoft Word or PowerPoint format.

When it comes to general program preferences, you can pick a different font for the tree, modify the default author and use the current date when creating a new file, select the preferred dictionary for the spellchecker, as well as customize graphical elements for the premises, reasons, objections and helpers, among others.

All aspects considered, Argumentative might be considered an outdated application, but it provides a simple and straightforward solution for going through arguments. Besides, we haven't come across any compatibility issues with the latest Windows version in our tests.