[chandler-users] email and hierarchies of items and projects

[Topher Buck]

Greetings, all,

I've been following, enjoying, and learning from the conversation in  
the chandler-users forum for many months now.  I don't necessarily  
have anything new to contribute (and, consequently, I don't expect a  
reply), but I would like to add my voice to the chorus of those  
offering encouragement and suggestions.

As I have been working to adapt and implement GTD (or a GTD-like  
methodology), I have been investigating and experimenting with  
Chandler and other similar applications.  In addition to Chandler  
I've mostly been playing around with the Omni Group's OmniFocus  
application (I am a Mac user; this option isn't available to Linux or  
Windows devotees).  There are many aspects of Chandler that I really  
like: the fact of its being an open-source, cross-platform project  
and the ability to share collections and thereby collaborate with  
others by publishing collections are top of the list.  At this point,  
the two attributes the absence of which represents the biggest hurdle  
for me are (1) insufficient integration with email (i.e., the  
inability to use Chandler as a mail client or at least tightly to  
integrate it into a good mail client) and (2) the inability to create  
hierarchies of projects and tasks or actions within collections.   
Again, neither of these thoughts is original.  The former is a  
frequent topic in this forum, and Michael Grant, Pierre-François  
Gomez, and (most recently) Webb Roberts have mentioned the latter at  
various junctures.

I think tight integration with email is at least as important as  
integration with a calendar.  Both are essential to effective  
management of my work and to effective collaboration.  I'm still  
captivated by what I take to be one of the original visions for  
Chandler: an application in which one could (1) receive an email  
message and convert it to (stamp it as) a task and/or calendar item  
and (2) create a note which later morphs into a task and/or calendar  
item and can also be addressed (sent, delegated, shared,... in other  
words, emailed) to a colleague.  Until Chandler itself grows to  
encompass decent email capabilities or can be used in close  
conjunction with another good mail client (e.g., Thunderbird), I fear  
this vision is going to remain tantalizingly inchoate.

The hierarchy issue is something that OmniFocus seems to address  
fairly well.  Given the way I [think about my] work, it makes sense  
to me to create collections that correspond to the top-level at which  
things are aggregated and then to create projects within those  
collections to group and order multiple specific tasks or actions.   
For the sake of comparison, OmniFocus uses the hierarchy:
Library > Folders > Projects > Actions
which more or less corresponds in Chandler to:
Dashboard > Collections > Item > [     ]
although I think that Chandler's dashboard is less about hierarchy in  
the sense of a filesystem than it is about viewing items in the UI-- 
which is all I'm really talking about anyway.

I might have many (10 to 20) "projects" (multi-step things to do)  
within each collection or folder, each of which, in turn, comprises a  
number of discreet tasks or actions.  If I have to create a separate  
collection in Chandler for each project, not only do I not have a  
good way--other than arrangement and color, I suppose--to organize  
those collections (these 13 relate to Project X, these four relate to  
Project Y, and these nine relate to Project Z), but I would also end  
up with so many collections down the left side of the application  
window that I wouldn't be able to see them without keeping the mini- 
cal hidden.

Like so many other contributors to chandler-users, I want mostly to  
express encouragement and thanks for Chandler, not criticize, so I  
hope this posting doesn't come across the wrong way.  If someone  
would help me work more efficiently, I might have enough time to  
learn to code Python so I could contribute more meaningfully.

/topher