[chandler-users] Re: Automatic Assignments
Carl Lemp
clemp2002 at yahoo.com
Tue Mar 18 17:24:47 PDT 2008
Mimi,
Mimi, in your response to me and Alan, you mentioned that OSAF support volunteers working on features you don't have time to get to. That soundsinteresting! Do you have any guess as to how many persondays/weeks/months it might take for a novice Python programmer to getup to speed on Chandler internals and then implement a simpleauto-assignment of items based on collection name and synonyms for collectionnames?
I understand your point about sharing when it comes to acalendar or a discrete item like a FAQ. If the data is entered into a common place, evreryone can see it without having to send email back and forth. That's great for a FAQ entry because it falls into a clear category. However, for all those little items that are niether fish nor foul, the problem isn't sharing them, it's where to put them. Is there a way to use Chandlerto help track the dozens or hundreds of little items that come upwhen managing a series of complex, inter-related projects. Forexample, in your work on Chandler, there must be hundreds of things todo and track. To solve the where-to-put-it problem, I would like to put it everywhere it might be related. I would like to use Chandler to beable to add an item "Call Fred about the specification for the B123 project. It's due next Tuesday."and it would show up in each of the following collections Phone Calls,Fred, Documentation,
Projects, B123, and on my calendar for next Tuesday. That way, no matter which angle I'm looking at my to-do list from, it will show up and remind me that it needs to be done. The same problem comes up when gathering requirements for a project or doing library research. At the end of a meeting or a day, one ends up with a pile of notes that don't fit clearly in a single category or clearly fit in multiple categories or, one doesn't even see the correct category until after rereading many of the notes. In that last case, it would be great to add a new collection, tell Chandler to rescan the items and the related items appear in the collection. To have to go through each item and manually assign it just takes more time than it's worth.
Doyou use Chandler for tracking 100's of little items or notes? Maybe there's a better wayto use the existing features of Chandler that I just haven't caughtonto yet.
Regards,
Carl
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Today's Topics:
1. Re: The story of a new user (Mimi Yin)
2. Auto-filing in Chandler? (Mimi Yin)
3. An answer to "In Chandler, nothing is ever overdue - Part 2
of 2" ( Pierre-Fran?ois Gomez )
4. Re: The story of a new user (Allan Day)
5. Re: mouse-free hotkeys in Chandler Desktop (Jeffrey Harris)
6. Re: task dependencies, PDA-readable output file (Jeffrey Harris)
7. Re: The story of a new user (Jeffrey Harris)
8. Re: An answer to "In Chandler, nothing is ever overdue - Part
2 of 2" (Allan Day)
9. Re: The story of a new user (Mimi Yin)
10. Re: The story of a new user (Andrew Smart)
11. Re: An answer to "In Chandler, nothing is ever overdue - Part
2 of 2" ( Pierre-Fran?ois Gomez )
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Message: 1
Date: Mon, 17 Mar 2008 13:26:13 -0700
From: Mimi Yin <mimi at osafoundation.org>
Subject: Re: [chandler-users] The story of a new user
To: allanday at fastmail.fm
Cc: Chandler users <chandler-users at osafoundation.org>
Message-ID: <6DD3E02A-7624-418F-87ED-967C37C13640 at osafoundation.org>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; delsp=yes; format=flowed
Hi Allan,
Thanks for writing in with your use cases. User write-ups are very
helpful as we continue to refine the product.
I think all of your requests are reasonable. Ideally, Chandler would
support the ability to allow users to define their own Triage Statuses.
Now onto philosophy ;) I agree with the sentiment that life is fuzzy.
The Triage Statuses are meant to be a reflection of that, so I am
concerned that you feel that NOW implies such a strict sense of time.
If the NOW section were renamed something like ACTIVE, would it make
more sense for you? Would you be more comfortable having multiple
items in there at the same time?
Mimi
On Mar 17, 2008, at 9:30 AM, Allan Day wrote:
> Thanks for your reply, bak.
>> Just a few thoughts from another Chandler newbie.
>>
>> Allan Day wrote:
>>> [...]
>>> *Now*
>>> When is now?! Are we ever 'in the now'? To me, 'now' says 'right
>>> this
>>> moment'. But when is this actually the case? Things in my life
>>> are a bit
>>> fuzzier than that. Philosophically speaking, the accessibility of
>>> 'now'
>>> is an open question - are we able to access the 'now' as a
>>> subject of
>>> conscious thought? I'd prefer something that meant something a
>>> little
>>> fuzzier - 'round about now', 'any minute now', 'happening', 'soon',
>>> 'today', 'in-progress'.
>>> On a more practical level, the whole work flow thing isn't
>>> happening for
>>> me. All the items in my collections are currently set to 'Later'.
>>> Again,
>>> this may be a consequence of my not using Chandler's calendering
>>> functionality.
>>>
>>> The imperative behind 'now' seems to be that I should have multiple
>>> items happening 'now', but that isn't the way me or my work
>>> operates.
>> I sort of had this same reaction, but the fact of the matter is
>> that it's up to you to decide! My workflow thing so far has been
>> to have everything set to 'LATER', and then bring in a group of
>> things that could happen today, soon, to 'NOW', and then process
>> them to 'DONE'.
>>
>> Basically -- do what makes sense! The rules are not embedded in
>> the tool like they are with some other GTD-ish apps like
>> ThinkingRock or iGTD or whatever.
>>
>> As for 'NOW' vs. 'Any minute now' -- screen real estate is
>> expensive! I believe the idea is to just recognize the ambiguity
>> here and use 'NOW' for the sake of brevity. :) Map it to some
>> other concept as you see fit.
> I agree - there's no reason why I can't understand 'now' in a way
> that suits me. Except that 'now' does have an inescapable meaning
> in this context - the context of 'now' 'done' 'later'. I can choose
> to reinterpret, but only in a way which clearly goes against the
> intended meaning.
>
> Don't get me wrong - I see why 'now' is the right word for many (if
> not most) users of Chandler. I guess what I was getting at is that
> the kind of work that I do doesn't involve much stuff happening
> 'now'. I'm not a typical user of Chandler. As such, I was thinking
> that it would be nice to have some other ways of designating items
> - 'soon', 'upcoming', 'next', 'on ice', 'deferred'.
>>> *Publishing*
>>> Currently, I'm using the Hub purely as a means to synchronise my
>>> collections over multiple machines (the web front end will come
>>> in the
>>> future, I'm sure). To share a collection with the Hub, I
>>> 'Publish' it,
>>> but it is unclear to me whether such published collections are
>>> publicly
>>> accessible or not. The word 'Publish' would suggest that they
>>> are, but I
>>> don't really want them to be.
>> They are not. You have to give someone a that URL with the long,
>> funky UUID in it, and also generate a ticket that lives on the hub
>> and allows people to see it. It is analogous to the way you share
>> calendars in Google Calendar.
>>
>> But I hear you. My solution is to run my own Chandler server --
>> then again, I spent some time in the UNIX admin salt mines, so it
>> was not much of a time investment to me.
> It's good to hear that it's not public.
>>>
>>> *The dashboard*
>>> Why not 'All'? I think someone else said it on this list - a
>>> dashboard
>>> is something with a steering wheel on it. I don't see what
>>> additional
>>> meaning the word 'dashboard' carries which could be useful in this
>>> situation.
>> Actually, dashboard != 'All'. It only equals 'All' if you want it
>> to.
>>
>> This is kind of nifty -- what I've done is group stuff in
>> collections by context, in a GTD-ish type of way. So I have a
>> @work and @home collection, for example. At home I right-click
>> '@work' and select the 'Don't show in dashboard' option, and vice
>> versa at work -- that way, I don't have distracting clutter in my
>> list of action items for stuff from the wrong context in 'Dashboard'.
>>
> True - Dashboard isn't quite the same as all. (Though couldn't you
> exclude from 'all? Maybe that would be a little contradictory...!)
>
> Maybe my unease with 'Dashboard' reflects the way I'm using
> Chandler. To me, 'Dashboard' means the place where everything gets
> controlled, where things are assigned, where I survey everything
> that is going on, and where that stuff gets managed. But that's not
> what I use Chandler for. I use it to manage a very discrete set of
> items; two or three lists, essentially. To me, it's a tool with a
> specific, rather than a general, purpose, and no me, 'all'
> communicates this in a way that 'Dashboard' doesn't.
>
> I'm not writing this to say 'this is how I think Chandler should
> be'. I realise that there must be a lot of that already! All I'm
> saying is that in my particular case - my particular use of
> Chandler - these are the things that I (rightly or wrongly)
> encountered. That's as far as it goes. :)
>
> Allan
> _______________________________________________
> chandler-users mailing list
> chandler-users at osafoundation.org
> http://lists.osafoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/chandler-users
------------------------------
Message: 2
Date: Mon, 17 Mar 2008 14:06:04 -0700
From: Mimi Yin <mimi at osafoundation.org>
Subject: [chandler-users] Auto-filing in Chandler?
To: Andrew Smart <andrew.smart at nyu.edu>, Carl Lemp
<clemp2002 at yahoo.com>
Cc: Chandler users <chandler-users at osafoundation.org>
Message-ID: <342A4F76-5A2F-4331-BFE5-5A08256F8249 at osafoundation.org>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
Hello Andy and Carl,
Chandler is certainly meant to support the kind of rule-based
collections you're describing. They already exist in the app today:
Dashboard, In and Out, plus the Mail, Task, and Calendar variations
of each sidebar collection. Unfortunately you can't define them
yourselves.
In the coming months, we're unlikely to put staff resources on
implementing user-defined, rule-based collections - thought we'll
gladly help anyone who would like to invest time as a volunteer.
As it happens, Chandler will take a pass at parsing date/time
information in your email if you drag messages into the Chandler
Events IMAP folder. (You can configure Chandler to set up special
Chandler IMAP folders so that you can add messages from your email
account to Chandler. The messages show up in your Dashboard and In/
Out collections as Events.)
Have you tried sharing with a Chandler Hub account? https://
hub.chandlerproject.org
Sharing fundamentally changes many of the workflows you're
describing. In many ways, the problem of having too many email to
file starts with not having a shared space to collaborate. I've found
that getting even 1 other person to share a collection (a colleagues
or spouse) dramatically reduces the amount of email that flies back
and forth.
Also, if you're sharing with someone, they will automatically add new-
items and events into the right collection, straight onto the
calendar *for* you. No need to file or auto-file on your part. Better
yet, if you're collaborating on a list with someone (say you're
compiling a FAQ), you can both simply add to the FAQ item. No need to
collate FAQ ideas across dozens of different emails into a single
authoritative list.
This kind of read-write collaboration isn't anything new ;) but in
Chandler, it's integrated with all of your personal stuff because you
can manage that FAQ List in both a shared collection *and* a personal
collection.
Mimi
Begin forwarded message:
> From: Carl Lemp <clemp2002 at yahoo.com>
> Date: March 16, 2008 12:38:02 PM PDT
> To: chandler-users at osafoundation.org
> Subject: [chandler-users] Re: chandler-users Digest, Vol 15, Issue 15
> Reply-To: Chandler users <chandler-users at osafoundation.org>
>
> I think Andrew Smart's comments reflect what a large number of
> users, including myself, are looking for in a PIM or GTD type
> application. An electronic assistant files items, manages group
> and personal calendars, and remembers everything. Chandler is
> part way there but to become indispensible, it needs to be
> smarter. Like Andy, I don't want to have to look at each item
> and then manually assign it to all the correct collections. It
> just takes too much time. However, if simple content based rules
> could be set up similar to what Agenda had so many years ago, it
> would be much more useful for people trying to use it to manage
> many items in many collections. Even something as simple as the
> following would be a big help: Allow the user to enter synonyms for
> a collection name and then have items automatically assigned to the
> collection if any of the words in the item match either the
> collection name or it's synonyms. Are there any plans to add
> automatic assignment to Chandler in the near future?
>
> Regards,
>
> Carl
Begin forwarded message:
> From: Andrew Smart <andrew.smart at nyu.edu>
> Date: March 16, 2008 10:46:27 AM PDT
> To: Chandler users <chandler-users at osafoundation.org>
> Subject: Re: [chandler-users] The story of a new user
> Reply-To: Chandler users <chandler-users at osafoundation.org>
>
> Hi,
>
> I am also brand new to Chandler and I am trying it for apparently
> the same reasons as Allan Day. I am a researcher at a lab and I was
> hunting around for something that could magically organize my
> calendar as well as our small group's calendar, and sync each
> individual in the group to the group calendar. I also share Allan's
> experience with setting up Chandler to do what I would like it to do.
>
> I am at the level where I can't get Chandler to read my email. My
> email server is a big university email service so I am not sure
> about security, but I would love for Chandler to be able to read my
> email, so that I could really "use my inbox as my task manager".
> Every person in our small group also has the same university email
> server. Any tips about this?
>
> As it is now, I do use my inbox as my calendar, task manager, phone
> number repository, list holder etc - basically all information I
> need for my job is in my inbox because I don't have the time to
> manually transfer the information in my inbox to a calendar. This
> would require me thinking about each email, categorizing it and
> placing it in the right place to be acted upon later. As I am sure
> everyone in this situation knows, this could easily take hours
> EVERY DAY. So if I need to remember a meeting, or a task, or some
> contact information, where do I go? My inbox. Obviously this isn't
> the most reliable and efficient way of storing and retrieving
> information. I share the dream of having an automated system that
> just reads my email for me and presents me with a calendar.
>
> Human memory is not designed for reliable information storage. This
> is exactly why we need Chandler type programs. However, computers
> are not designed for flexibility, "fuzzy logic" (yet), determining
> how urgent a task is based on the current circumstances, when to
> ignore irrelevant information (or even the means of determining
> what is irrelevant), or when to change some piece of information
> from irrelevant to relevant depending on my current goal.
>
> But I do think Chandler is a great start toward having an assistant
> with perfect memory.
>
> Best,
> Andy
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------------------------------
Message: 3
Date: Mon, 17 Mar 2008 23:03:58 +0100
From: " Pierre-Fran?ois Gomez " <pef.gomez at gmail.com>
Subject: [chandler-users] An answer to "In Chandler, nothing is ever
overdue - Part 2 of 2"
To: "Chandler users" <chandler-users at osafoundation.org>
Message-ID:
<8f835a8e0803171503u26e2d71arb820df399c041a37 at mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
Hi all !
I write this in answer to Mimi's blog post.
Yes, I realize there's a comment facility in the blog, but I felt some
of this would be of interest to this list... and I'm just too arrogant
to spare you my opinion anyway ;-)
Mimi Yin wrote :
>
> "trying to balance "avoiding the futility of time management" with a need to keep the
> LATER section somewhat under control."
Ok, throwing "futility" and "management" in the same sentence was
really great to read, but that's not why I'm citing it : it's just
that to me, it's very representative of the kind of mindset I like to
"see" behind the tools I use.
I mean, the tools I like to use are generally both non-intrusive and capable.
> But I worry about going down the path of more granualar LATER sub-sections
> I worry about falling into the trap of over-planning,
[...]
> which again, results in big piles of items getting dumped into NOW when they're
> not ready to deal with them.
So do I. Tools that pushed me into spending more time planning than
actually doing real work all failed me precisely because of this : big
piles of items ;-)
I certainly wouldn't want chandler to become one of these tools.
I completely agree with this (if I read it correctly) : if you really want
fine-grained "later" items, just assign them dates !
But how do you distinguish later-items-with-dates from
later-items-without-dates ?
Mimi tackles this problem a few lines below :
> Instead, I think it will be more effective to automatically collect all LATER items that
> don't have a specified time frame (items with no alarm, no event dates) into a separate
> section called "LATER - No date assigned".*
Here I agree on the idea but not on the wording : personally I much
prefer the way Grant Baillie calls it in the linked bug 11774[1] : "We
could even call it "Someday/Maybe" :)"
Definitely Grant ! As much as I don't want to blindly follow GTD (or
to blindly follow *anything*, for that matter), I don't think it's a good
idea to systematically try to find another expression for the very
same idea.
Particularly when the new name is ugly[2] :)
Finally, Mimi, I'd like to point out an idea you evoked on the list a
few threads back, and which is remarkably close to your "separate
section" idea. I'm talking about these 'rule-based' collections.
Again imho, this would be a very elegant way to deal with this :
- have a new rule-based collection called "someday/maybe"
- the only rule wouldn't be user-definable : displaying all later items
without any dates
- display it alongside "in" and "out", or maybe just among the other
user-definable collections
- obviously, when you click on it, you see all the "later" items
without any date
- of course, there wouldn't be any "now" or "done" items there
- switching an item to "now" or "done" would remove it from this
computed collection
- dragging an item on it would remove all date informations (same as
'remove from agenda')
- dragging an item on it would also set it as "later"
I'm pretty sure you already thought through this and that I overlook
something : just
drop in ;-)
Thoughts ?
[1] https://bugzilla.osafoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=11774#c2
[2] no offense intended : "someday/maybe" just sounds a lot better to me ;-)
-- pef
------------------------------
Message: 4
Date: Mon, 17 Mar 2008 23:30:43 +0000
From: Allan Day <allanday at fastmail.fm>
Subject: Re: [chandler-users] The story of a new user
To: Mimi Yin <mimi at osafoundation.org>
Cc: Chandler users <chandler-users at osafoundation.org>
Message-ID: <47DEFF23.60709 at fastmail.fm>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
Hi Mimi,
>
> Thanks for writing in with your use cases. User write-ups are very
> helpful as we continue to refine the product.
I'm glad it's helpful. I was concerned that, being something of a
non-standard user, I might be throwing things off. Feel free to ignore me!
>
> I think all of your requests are reasonable. Ideally, Chandler would
> support the ability to allow users to define their own Triage Statuses.
That really would be the best thing, as far as I'm concerned.
One thing that I'm often aware of is the way that the future has a
tendency to expand and contract - often, I'm looking three weeks into
the future. At times, this can expand to 9 months or a year, only to
collapse down again later. The ability to adjust Triage Statuses would
be helpful in dealing with that.
>
> Now onto philosophy ;)
Excellent! :)
> I agree with the sentiment that life is fuzzy. The Triage Statuses are
> meant to be a reflection of that, so I am concerned that you feel that
> NOW implies such a strict sense of time.
>
> If the NOW section were renamed something like ACTIVE, would it make
> more sense for you? Would you be more comfortable having multiple
> items in there at the same time?
Oh, don't worry about me too much! ;)
The way I described it is how I understand NOW... that's all I can say.
So, yes, ACTIVE would be much closer to the way I manage my work, but
again, that's just me.
Thanks for getting back,
Allan
>
> Mimi
>
> On Mar 17, 2008, at 9:30 AM, Allan Day wrote:
>
>> Thanks for your reply, bak.
>>> Just a few thoughts from another Chandler newbie.
>>>
>>> Allan Day wrote:
>>>> [...]
>>>> *Now*
>>>> When is now?! Are we ever 'in the now'? To me, 'now' says 'right this
>>>> moment'. But when is this actually the case? Things in my life are
>>>> a bit
>>>> fuzzier than that. Philosophically speaking, the accessibility of
>>>> 'now'
>>>> is an open question - are we able to access the 'now' as a subject of
>>>> conscious thought? I'd prefer something that meant something a little
>>>> fuzzier - 'round about now', 'any minute now', 'happening', 'soon',
>>>> 'today', 'in-progress'.
>>>> On a more practical level, the whole work flow thing isn't
>>>> happening for
>>>> me. All the items in my collections are currently set to 'Later'.
>>>> Again,
>>>> this may be a consequence of my not using Chandler's calendering
>>>> functionality.
>>>>
>>>> The imperative behind 'now' seems to be that I should have multiple
>>>> items happening 'now', but that isn't the way me or my work operates.
>>> I sort of had this same reaction, but the fact of the matter is that
>>> it's up to you to decide! My workflow thing so far has been to have
>>> everything set to 'LATER', and then bring in a group of things that
>>> could happen today, soon, to 'NOW', and then process them to 'DONE'.
>>>
>>> Basically -- do what makes sense! The rules are not embedded in the
>>> tool like they are with some other GTD-ish apps like ThinkingRock or
>>> iGTD or whatever.
>>>
>>> As for 'NOW' vs. 'Any minute now' -- screen real estate is
>>> expensive! I believe the idea is to just recognize the ambiguity
>>> here and use 'NOW' for the sake of brevity. :) Map it to some other
>>> concept as you see fit.
>> I agree - there's no reason why I can't understand 'now' in a way
>> that suits me. Except that 'now' does have an inescapable meaning in
>> this context - the context of 'now' 'done' 'later'. I can choose to
>> reinterpret, but only in a way which clearly goes against the
>> intended meaning.
>>
>> Don't get me wrong - I see why 'now' is the right word for many (if
>> not most) users of Chandler. I guess what I was getting at is that
>> the kind of work that I do doesn't involve much stuff happening
>> 'now'. I'm not a typical user of Chandler. As such, I was thinking
>> that it would be nice to have some other ways of designating items -
>> 'soon', 'upcoming', 'next', 'on ice', 'deferred'.
>>>> *Publishing*
>>>> Currently, I'm using the Hub purely as a means to synchronise my
>>>> collections over multiple machines (the web front end will come in the
>>>> future, I'm sure). To share a collection with the Hub, I 'Publish' it,
>>>> but it is unclear to me whether such published collections are
>>>> publicly
>>>> accessible or not. The word 'Publish' would suggest that they are,
>>>> but I
>>>> don't really want them to be.
>>> They are not. You have to give someone a that URL with the long,
>>> funky UUID in it, and also generate a ticket that lives on the hub
>>> and allows people to see it. It is analogous to the way you share
>>> calendars in Google Calendar.
>>>
>>> But I hear you. My solution is to run my own Chandler server --
>>> then again, I spent some time in the UNIX admin salt mines, so it
>>> was not much of a time investment to me.
>> It's good to hear that it's not public.
>>>>
>>>> *The dashboard*
>>>> Why not 'All'? I think someone else said it on this list - a dashboard
>>>> is something with a steering wheel on it. I don't see what additional
>>>> meaning the word 'dashboard' carries which could be useful in this
>>>> situation.
>>> Actually, dashboard != 'All'. It only equals 'All' if you want it to.
>>>
>>> This is kind of nifty -- what I've done is group stuff in
>>> collections by context, in a GTD-ish type of way. So I have a @work
>>> and @home collection, for example. At home I right-click '@work'
>>> and select the 'Don't show in dashboard' option, and vice versa at
>>> work -- that way, I don't have distracting clutter in my list of
>>> action items for stuff from the wrong context in 'Dashboard'.
>>>
>> True - Dashboard isn't quite the same as all. (Though couldn't you
>> exclude from 'all? Maybe that would be a little contradictory...!)
>>
>> Maybe my unease with 'Dashboard' reflects the way I'm using Chandler.
>> To me, 'Dashboard' means the place where everything gets controlled,
>> where things are assigned, where I survey everything that is going
>> on, and where that stuff gets managed. But that's not what I use
>> Chandler for. I use it to manage a very discrete set of items; two or
>> three lists, essentially. To me, it's a tool with a specific, rather
>> than a general, purpose, and no me, 'all' communicates this in a way
>> that 'Dashboard' doesn't.
>>
>> I'm not writing this to say 'this is how I think Chandler should be'.
>> I realise that there must be a lot of that already! All I'm saying is
>> that in my particular case - my particular use of Chandler - these
>> are the things that I (rightly or wrongly) encountered. That's as far
>> as it goes. :)
>>
>> Allan
>> _______________________________________________
>> chandler-users mailing list
>> chandler-users at osafoundation.org
>> http://lists.osafoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/chandler-users
>
------------------------------
Message: 5
Date: Mon, 17 Mar 2008 16:47:33 -0700
From: Jeffrey Harris <jeffrey at osafoundation.org>
Subject: Re: [chandler-users] mouse-free hotkeys in Chandler Desktop
To: Chandler users <chandler-users at osafoundation.org>
Message-ID: <47DF0315.80304 at osafoundation.org>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
Hi Alan,
> Has anyone else asked for mouse-free functionality in
> Chandler Desktop?
This is definitely an oft-requested feature.
As it happens, it's trivial to add this for any command that appears in
a menu. So trivial, in fact, that the real issue for existing menu
items is about what the keyboard shortcuts should be on the various
platforms :)
There aren't currently menu items for changing triage status, but adding
them would be pretty easy. I think there's already a bug to allow
multi-select -> change triage status en masse.
I think this issue is an almost ideal starter project for someone who'd
like to contribute to Chandler.
If you're interested in playing around with this, look at your local
version of this file:
http://lxr.osafoundation.org/source/chandler/parcels/osaf/views/main/menus.py
Once you've changed or added shortcuts, you'll need to restart Chandler
with the ctrl key held down, and select "clean up, but keep my data" (I
think that works, if not, you'll need to start with a fresh repository).
Adding menu items for triage status would take a little more effort, but
not much more, so if you're interested in working on that, please speak
up! I think probably questions about doing that should live on
chandler-dev, though.
Sincerely,
Jeffrey
------------------------------
Message: 6
Date: Mon, 17 Mar 2008 17:50:45 -0700
From: Jeffrey Harris <jeffrey at osafoundation.org>
Subject: Re: [chandler-users] task dependencies, PDA-readable output
file
To: Chandler users <chandler-users at osafoundation.org>
Message-ID: <47DF11E5.8050203 at osafoundation.org>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
Hi Alan,
> (1) the ability to grant and revoke multiple tickets
> from Chandler Desktop (which can currently be done
> only from Chandler Server)
>
> (2) the ability to write out collection names, the
> list of items in the collection, and associated pieces
> of information, such as notes and times, to a text
> file
While I think Andre has worked on 2), many of the features you mention
aren't in his initial plugin. I don't think either of these are likely
to happen soon without additional effort.
> (3) the ability to show dependencies between tasks
>
> I know there's a plugin for item (3), but I've warned
> that it doesn't preserve data across upgrades and
> might have some other problems, so I've been a little
> too intimidated to install it. Does anyone here know
> what the known issues with it are?
Well, I wrote the plugin, so I guess I should answer this in more detail
than I gave you in IRC :)
The dependency plugin's UI is quite limited, it only shows dependencies
in a drop down in the detail view. But if that's enough to satisfy your
use case, I think it's working now.
To make the dependency data last between upgrades of the software, and
to make the data share-able, a small amount of work would need to be
done. The architecture is all there to do this, someone would just need
to implement it, which is straightforward.
Tell you what. I'll try to add the necessary future-proofing as a quick
weekend project when I get back from vacation in early April.
Sincerely,
Jeffrey
------------------------------
Message: 7
Date: Mon, 17 Mar 2008 18:09:58 -0700
From: Jeffrey Harris <jeffrey at osafoundation.org>
Subject: Re: [chandler-users] The story of a new user
To: Chandler users <chandler-users at osafoundation.org>
Message-ID: <47DF1666.5080909 at osafoundation.org>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
Hi Allan,
> I'm glad it's helpful. I was concerned that, being something of a
> non-standard user, I might be throwing things off. Feel free to ignore me!
I don't think you're a non-standard user at all, I think PhD students
are very close to the group we're interested in catering to,
*especially* if you're actively collaborating with other academics, but
even if not, if you have lots of notes that you need to process every
day, I think you're who we're trying to serve.
> The way I described it is how I understand NOW... that's all I can say.
> So, yes, ACTIVE would be much closer to the way I manage my work, but
> again, that's just me.
I think ACTIVE and DEFERRED would be fine labels.
I wonder if NOW and LATER would make more sense if we'd labeled that
column "Focus"? I think of triage status as really being about focus,
these are things I want to focus on right now, these are things I'll
focus on later. In that context, NOW/LATER mean pretty much the same
thing to me as ACTIVE/DEFERRED. Would having the word focus associated
help you?
I think this is actually an important issue, the words we use to label
features have to accurately convey what we're trying to provide
workflows for. If the words aren't read the way we want them to be, we
need to change the word!
Sincerely,
Jeffrey
------------------------------
Message: 8
Date: Tue, 18 Mar 2008 01:22:31 +0000
From: "Allan Day" <allanday at fastmail.fm>
Subject: Re: [chandler-users] An answer to "In Chandler, nothing is
ever overdue - Part 2 of 2"
To: "Chandler users" <chandler-users at osafoundation.org>, "Chandler
users" <chandler-users at osafoundation.org>
Message-ID: <1205803351.3438.1242952283 at webmail.messagingengine.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="ISO-8859-1"
Hi Pierre-François, everyone,
> I write this in answer to Mimi's blog post.
Super! I also wanted to email about it.
Mimi:
> > But I worry about going down the path of more granualar LATER sub-sections
> > I worry about falling into the trap of over-planning,
Too true. At the same time, I think it's important to follow the
principle of mechanism over policy. Maybe you don't need to worry about
over-planning? Maybe that should be for the user to worry about? ;)
Pierre-François, you quoted parts of Mimi's blog post. Let me quote a
bigger chunk, since I think it might be helpful:
Mimi:
> > But I worry about going down the path of more granualar LATER sub-sections.
> > I worry about falling into the trap of over-planning, over-emphasizing the importance
> > of defining timeframes and inadvertently pushing users to assign dates they have no
> > intention of holding themselves to, which again, results in big piles of items
> > getting dumped into NOW when they’re not ready to deal with them.
And pet's response:
> So do I. Tools that pushed me into spending more time planning than
> actually doing real work all failed me precisely because of this : big
> piles of items ;-)
>
> I certainly wouldn't want chandler to become one of these tools.
>
> I completely agree with this (if I read it correctly) : if you really
> want
> fine-grained "later" items, just assign them dates !
And some more Mimi:
> > This smaller, hopefully more manageable “LATER-No date assigned” section acts as
> > a reminder that there are deferred items that need to be reviewed and re-evaluated
> > on a regular basis because they’re not going to magically re-appear in NOW on their own.
I'm a little confused here, so excuse me if I get this wrong... :)
Mimi, you wrote that you don't want to push 'users to assign dates'. I
wholeheartedly agree! But doesn't the proposal you've made potentially
do just that? It assumes that most of a users' items will have dates. In
a situation where you only have a small number of Triage Statuses, dates
become the only other way to organise items within a single collection.
(Correct me if I'm wrong!)
The way my work operates, very few items have dates attached to them. If
I were to assign dates to those items as a way to organise them, then
those dates would have to be fairly arbitrary (and more or less
meaningless). I would end up producing the kinds of problem described in
the blog post (items popping up unwanted in NOW).
Pierre-François, when you state 'just assign them dates', wouldn't this
be the result, or am I wrong somehow?
An idea that Mimi mentioned in an earlier email would be my preferred
solution: user defined Triage Statuses. In my mind, users would be able
to create as many of these as they wanted. I like this idea because it
would enable users to plan to whatever extent that they want. They could
go for fairly wide, fuzzy statuses, or they could have very neatly
defined, narrow ones. Mechanism over policy (with a good set of
defaults!).
By all means, have 'LATER-No date assigned' as a default. Just leave us
no date people with a way to organise our items! ;)
Best,
Allan
------------------------------
Message: 9
Date: Mon, 17 Mar 2008 18:50:53 -0700
From: Mimi Yin <mimi at osafoundation.org>
Subject: Re: [chandler-users] The story of a new user
To: Chandler users <chandler-users at osafoundation.org>
Message-ID: <BB42494F-D1DB-438A-9961-EE8CDE560629 at osafoundation.org>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; delsp=yes; format=flowed
Heh, well there is the small issue of space! We could abbreviate in
the Status column: ACT and DEF and spell out the labels in full in
the section headers. On the other hand, it's nice today that the full
word fits into the column.
I think this might be a good question to add to the informal "focus
group" we're running to test the new chandler homepage and product
messaging.
On Mar 17, 2008, at 6:09 PM, Jeffrey Harris wrote:
> Hi Allan,
>
>> I'm glad it's helpful. I was concerned that, being something of a
>> non-standard user, I might be throwing things off. Feel free to
>> ignore me!
>
> I don't think you're a non-standard user at all, I think PhD
> students are very close to the group we're interested in catering
> to, *especially* if you're actively collaborating with other
> academics, but even if not, if you have lots of notes that you need
> to process every day, I think you're who we're trying to serve.
>
>> The way I described it is how I understand NOW... that's all I can
>> say. So, yes, ACTIVE would be much closer to the way I manage my
>> work, but again, that's just me.
>
> I think ACTIVE and DEFERRED would be fine labels.
>
> I wonder if NOW and LATER would make more sense if we'd labeled
> that column "Focus"? I think of triage status as really being
> about focus, these are things I want to focus on right now, these
> are things I'll focus on later. In that context, NOW/LATER mean
> pretty much the same thing to me as ACTIVE/DEFERRED. Would having
> the word focus associated help you?
>
> I think this is actually an important issue, the words we use to
> label features have to accurately convey what we're trying to
> provide workflows for. If the words aren't read the way we want
> them to be, we need to change the word!
>
> Sincerely,
> Jeffrey
> _______________________________________________
> chandler-users mailing list
> chandler-users at osafoundation.org
> http://lists.osafoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/chandler-users
------------------------------
Message: 10
Date: Mon, 17 Mar 2008 23:02:04 -0400
From: Andrew Smart <andrew.smart at nyu.edu>
Subject: Re: [chandler-users] The story of a new user
To: Chandler users <chandler-users at osafoundation.org>
Message-ID: <d511b42552b04.47def86c at mail.nyu.edu>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
At this point it seems that many Chandler users are probably pretty computer savvy, if not also programmers themselves - so maybe abbreviations would not be difficult for the current user profile. ACT and DEF sound like variable names :)
I am gladdened to know that small groups of researchers are the group (of groups) Chandler developers want to target! We need help!
>I don't think you're a non-standard user at all, I think PhD
> students are very close to the group we're interested in catering
> to, *especially* if you're actively collaborating with other
> academics, but even if not, if you have lots of notes that you need
> to process every day, I think you're who we're trying to serve.
What would be wonderful is a way to share collaborations across groups as well. For instance, I am a member of a lab with a group of people who physically work at the lab. But I, independently of the group, also collaborate with researchers in Sweden, France etc. based on projects in which we have a mutual interest. Other members of the group here collaborate with people from other groups on their own projects. It is of course really difficult to coordinate all this. And groups form and dissolve all the time when a project starts or is completed. When the group dissolves all of the useful things the group learns about organizing collaborations dissolves too. It would be great to be able to use Chandler to store a platform for collaboration, so that when a new research group forms we can just say "here is how this is organized" and everyone can be literally on the same page from day one. Groups in research are often more like transient assemblies of
people working on some problem. When the problem is solved, or more accurately when there is a paper about the problem, the members of group move on.
I know this isn't very concrete.
So what I mean is that for instance a person in Sweden and myself think of an idea for an experiment. We have the necessary equipment here so we collect the data. The guy in Sweden has developed a great new way to analyze the data, so we send him the data. Now, some people in France that I know have done similar experiments and also take a look at the data and offer some insight. We send data, upload data, make figures - back and forth for several months, sometimes we meet. Eventually one or two of us sits down and puts everything in a paper. We then send the paper back and forth among the group members for editing and revising. We then submit the paper. It hopefully gets accepted, but always with revisions. The process repeats and continues. This group dissolves (for the time being), I find some other collaborators etc....
What I want to point out is that all of the organization of this takes place ad hoc and on the fly. Often the planning of doing is more work than the doing- which is where I want Chandler to come in!
Re: words. Personally I think the word Focus is very intuitive for me. The word Now induces a stress reaction in me. I have a range of things in my current focus, but if I label something as "now" or "active" I feel like I have to think about it "right now".
Sorry this is so long - but I think about this a lot :)
andy
----- Original Message -----
From: Mimi Yin <mimi at osafoundation.org>
Date: Monday, March 17, 2008 9:53 pm
Subject: Re: [chandler-users] The story of a new user
To: Chandler users <chandler-users at osafoundation.org>
> Heh, well there is the small issue of space! We could abbreviate in
> the Status column: ACT and DEF and spell out the labels in full in
> the section headers. On the other hand, it's nice today that the full
>
> word fits into the column.
>
> I think this might be a good question to add to the informal "focus
>
> group" we're running to test the new chandler homepage and product
> messaging.
>
> On Mar 17, 2008, at 6:09 PM, Jeffrey Harris wrote:
>
> > Hi Allan,
> >
> >> I'm glad it's helpful. I was concerned that, being something of a
>
> >> non-standard user, I might be throwing things off. Feel free to
> >> ignore me!
> >
> > I don't think you're a non-standard user at all, I think PhD
> > students are very close to the group we're interested in catering
>
> > to, *especially* if you're actively collaborating with other
> > academics, but even if not, if you have lots of notes that you need
>
> > to process every day, I think you're who we're trying to serve.
> >
> >> The way I described it is how I understand NOW... that's all I can
>
> >> say. So, yes, ACTIVE would be much closer to the way I manage my
>
> >> work, but again, that's just me.
> >
> > I think ACTIVE and DEFERRED would be fine labels.
> >
> > I wonder if NOW and LATER would make more sense if we'd labeled
> > that column "Focus"? I think of triage status as really being
> > about focus, these are things I want to focus on right now, these
>
> > are things I'll focus on later. In that context, NOW/LATER mean
> > pretty much the same thing to me as ACTIVE/DEFERRED. Would having
>
> > the word focus associated help you?
> >
> > I think this is actually an important issue, the words we use to
> > label features have to accurately convey what we're trying to
> > provide workflows for. If the words aren't read the way we want
> > them to be, we need to change the word!
> >
> > Sincerely,
> > Jeffrey
> > _______________________________________________
> > chandler-users mailing list
> > chandler-users at osafoundation.org
> > http://lists.osafoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/chandler-users
>
> _______________________________________________
> chandler-users mailing list
> chandler-users at osafoundation.org
> http://lists.osafoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/chandler-users
>
------------------------------
Message: 11
Date: Tue, 18 Mar 2008 08:41:53 +0100
From: " Pierre-Fran?ois Gomez " <pef.gomez at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [chandler-users] An answer to "In Chandler, nothing is
ever overdue - Part 2 of 2"
To: "Chandler users" <chandler-users at osafoundation.org>
Message-ID:
<8f835a8e0803180041m3acc4d23s8fc9f13d80e3e285 at mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
Hi Allan,
On Tue, Mar 18, 2008 at 2:22 AM, Allan Day <allanday at fastmail.fm> wrote:
>
> > I write this in answer to Mimi's blog post.
>
> Super! I also wanted to email about it.
Yes, she has a way with words that makes our mind "boil" with ideas ;-)
> The way my work operates, very few items have dates attached to them. If
> I were to assign dates to those items as a way to organise them, then
> those dates would have to be fairly arbitrary (and more or less
> meaningless). I would end up producing the kinds of problem described in
> the blog post (items popping up unwanted in NOW).
>
> Pierre-François, when you state 'just assign them dates', wouldn't this
> be the result, or am I wrong somehow?
Hmm, you're right : I think I just overlooked a step that was mentionned
in the blog post (t'was late) :)
There were the idea of "LATER-No date assigned" for later items without
dates, but there were also the idea of "LATER-Not really" for items you
want to record "for peace of mind".
Now that I think about it (and now that I slept), I can already do that in
chandler :
- later items, with dates :
-> it's not for now, but I know precisely when I'll have to do something
about them.
- "starred" later items, without dates :
-> currently, this would translate : "later" tasks, without dates
-> it's not for now, but I don't know precisely when I'll have to do deal
with them.
-> in gtd "parlance", these would be "next actions", not the "someday/maybe"
I was talking about :)
- normal later items, without dates :
-> it's not for now and I don't even know if I will ever deal with them. I
just want to have it written somewhere so I can think of it... later ;-)
-> to me, this is the one that's closer to "someday/maybe"
-> for this one, I don't mind if it grows into a big pile of items because :
- they'd be tagged with other collections.
- they're not as important as the other ones, since I haven't decided
anything for them.
Thanks from prompting me Allan : I think I'll give it a try "manually" :)
> An idea that Mimi mentioned in an earlier email would be my preferred
> solution: user defined Triage Statuses. In my mind, users would be able
> to create as many of these as they wanted. I like this idea because it
> would enable users to plan to whatever extent that they want. They could
> go for fairly wide, fuzzy statuses, or they could have very neatly
> defined, narrow ones. Mechanism over policy (with a good set of
> defaults!).
I like this too : the only thing is that it's all manual... but no tool can do
the work for you anyway :)
Thanks again
-- pef
------------------------------
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