[chandler-users] Re: Some thoughts about Chandler

[Marcelo de Moraes Serpa]

*bump* - I feel so alone in this community :(

On Jan 13, 2008 5:43 PM, Marcelo de Moraes Serpa <celoserpa at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Hello!
>
> Nowadays, in this era of high-competition, it is vital to get things done
> fast and with quality in order to achieve personal and professional growth
> and satisfaction, specially for me, a "knowledge worker" who is bombarded
> with tons of information every single day.
>
> My life seemed like a completely chaos. I couldn't get anything done nor
> visualize my objectives and define outcomes. I then started searching for
> the answer. After reading David Allen's "Getting Things Done" I started to
> feel that there was indeed light at the end of the tunnel.
>
> GTD practitioners usually say that the most important thing is not the
> system but the methodology. I agree. But if you don't feel comfortable with
> how you implement the GTD method, I don't think you will get much out of it.
> I myself hate to write by hand (maybe becouse I'm a programmer?) and would
> rather type than write with a pen - it seems that the idea flows so fast in
> my mind that if I try to write it by hand it goes away before I end the
> writing it down.
>
> After learning the GTD methodology, I started to search for the holy
> grail, the perfect system/platform to implement it. As you might know, there
> are thousands for software written that claim to support the GTD method.
> I've used and tried many: Backpack, Remember the Milk, MonkeyGTD (based on
> TiddlyWiki), gmail, outlook etc. I ended up by using emacs + PlannerMode for
> some time, but due to synchronization issues, I left it out for good.
>
> Well... I kept searching and then found the Chandler Project. When I first
> entered its website, I though "Holy mother of God, this is exactly what I
> was looking for!" and it indeed is - at least in theory.
>
> I say "in theory", becouse while the project itself is guided by a great
> idea and the software is, at some level, great, there are still many quirks,
> bugs and issues that need to be solved before really considering Chandler to
> be "practical".
>
> I really sympathize with the Project. There is nothing else like Chandler
> around. I've started reading "Dreaming in COde" to know more about its
> history and future. I really want it to become a killer-app in what comes to
> PIMs.
>
> Sorry if some items below sound a bit harsh, it is not the intention. What
> I would like to do is to help making Chandler a better place to be :
>
> * Why the items in the "IN" collection can't go to the HUB?
>   I've inputed dozens of items in the "IN" collection at work, synced
> Chandler with the HUB just to find out at home that the items in the "IN"
> collection weren't there.
>
> * No undo feature for edited items?
>   I've deleted the whole text content for a task item and couldn't undo
> the changes.
>
> * Clusters? I"ve heard about them, but couldn't find much information.
>
> * Why no support for sub-collections?
>    Sub-collections should be supported. If the user does not want to use
> it then ok, but there are many problems that are better modeled with
> hierarchical structures, instead of flat ontes.
>
> * Chandler client just feels too heavy
>  It takes too much time to start and it feels sluggish while you work with
> it.
>
> * The user interfaces has too many quirks
>  Sometimes things just halt, sometimes the response time is too high, why
> is the user interface so buggy? Even the web interface of the HUB feels more
> responsible than the one of the client. For example, while trying to move 20
> items from one collection to another by batch-selecting then and moving
> (drag n' drop), Chandler halted about 5 times before I could complete the
> operation (I had to kill the process and start it again).
>
> * The sync feature isn't clear to me. I.e: I had this error while trying
> to sync a collection: "Recordset contains invalid data: Could not apply EIM
> recordset xxxxxx due to invalid data: "Unknown timezone BRT (HTTP STATUS
> 400)" and this collection just wouldn't sync.
>
> These were the problems I found out while working with Chandler for 2 or 3
> hours.
>
> I also would like to know more about the plugin architecture. How
> extesible Chandler is? What kind of plugins are possible? Can aspects of the
> user interface be changed through this API (for adding sub-collections for
> example). Where could I find more information and documentation regarding
> the plugin architecture?
>
> Thanks for the attention!
>
> Marcelo.
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