[chandler-users] Re: Automatic Assignments

[Carl Lemp]

Grant,
I've been programming for a quite a while but I'm new to Python so I'm willing to give it a try if you've got the time to point in the right direction.  Ideally, I'd like all items to be auto-assigned either as they are added or, on demand if there is no easy way to hook into events generated when an item is added.  I looked through the Chandler wiki and saw a couple of references to rule based collections and there have been a couple of references to rules by Mimi on the user list.  If rule based collections are planned or have already been worked on, is there anything to start from there since what I'm looking for is just a specific type of rule based collection? 

What I picture as a first step is a Properties item on the right-click menu for the collections in the side-bar.  On a properties dialog, I could add names/phrases to match (synonyms) for that collection and enable auto-assignment for the collection name and/or the synonyms.  Something like the syntax and capabilities of Google's advanced search page would be convenient and easily understood by everybody; only using Triage status and item type instead of Language and File Type.  Any items that matched would be assigned to the collection.  In addition to ensuring that an item showed up everywhere it was relevant, this would allow me to treat collections as views into the database of items.  To work well as a view, the rules would have to be applied to every item in the database so that I could define a new collection for an existing database and Chandler would search the entire database to assign all matching items to the new collection.

Could all that be done with a plug-in?  If so, could you point me toward the tutorial on creating plug-ins. 

Regards,

Carl

----- Original Message ----
From: Grant Baillie <grant at osafoundation.org>
To: chandler-users at osafoundation.org
Cc: Carl Lemp <clemp2002 at yahoo.com>
Sent: Wednesday, March 19, 2008 10:08:44 PM
Subject: Re: [chandler-users] Re: Automatic Assignments


On 18 Mar, 2008, at 17:24, Carl Lemp wrote:

> 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 sounds interesting!  Do you have any guess as to how many  
> person days/weeks/months it might take for a novice Python  
> programmer to get up to speed on Chandler internals and then  
> implement a simple auto-assignment of items based on collection name  
> and synonyms for collection names?

Hi, Carl

There is a bit of a learning curve (for novice programmers,  
especially) to getting to the point where you can be writing code for  
a Chandler plugin. If you're interested in trying, I'll happily point  
you at the relevant docs (e.g. there's a tutorial that does discuss  
setting up a plugin).

So far as person-week estimates go, I guess it depends on which items  
you want to make auto-assignments on (e.g. the quick entry field?  
incoming mail? any newly created item?). Can you elaborate on what you  
had in mind, especially w.r.t. where you would expect to find  
collection names, and how the synonyms would be set up?

--Grant




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