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

[Mimi Yin]

Hi Topher,

Thank you for your thoughtful feedback.

Some form of "hierarchy" in the sidebar is high on our list of  
feature enhancements to add. I can't guarantee it for 1.0, but we've  
decided to investigate what it would take to get started with a  
simple version of it.

Email integration has been a more nebulous requirement for us. The  
minimum feature set can be drastically different depending on who you  
talk to, what it would take for Chandler to serve as a passable email  
client. But I think I'm starting to see a pattern emerge...

What would it mean to you?

- A better way to get emails into Chandler: e.g. Download all Flagged  
emails into Chandler? We have a bug for this: https:// 
bugzilla.osafoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=11843 that is slated for 1.0.

- Rich text editing in the message body?

- Suck down all your email?
- Create email filters in Chandler to auto-file messages?
- Respect filtering rules you set on the Server ?
- 1-time download of my IMAP folder hierarchy into Chandler?
- 2-way sync my IMAP folder hierarchy?

- 2-way sync of Read/Unread, Flagged/Unflagged, Replied/Forwarded  
status?

(For what it's worth, I think most of these things are doable. I  
believe what's harder is anything involving 2-way sync because our  
data model is so different from email / IMAP. (e.g. Items in multiple  
collections, morphing item kinds, editable sent messages, etc)

Mimi

On Apr 15, 2008, at 9:16 PM, Topher Buck wrote:

> 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
>
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