[chandler-users] Re: chandler-users Digest, Vol 15, Issue 22
Carl Lemp
carl.lemp at snet.net
Mon Mar 24 12:55:12 PDT 2008
To everyone interested in auto-assignment of items:
It sounds like there are at least a few of us that have been patiently waiting for Chandler to take on some of the capabilities that Agenda had so long ago. I posted similar questions a few weeks ago and Grant Baillie of OSAF has contacted me about building a plug-in for auto-assignment of items to collections. If he can point me in the right direction to get started, I'm willing to give it a shot. Here was his first set of questions:
>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?
and my answer:
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.
An now a few questions for anyone who's interested in this feature:
Does this fit with everyone elses expectations of the way auto-assignment should behave?
How complicated would you need the assignment rules to be?
Do you need the unassign actions from Agenda (When item is assigned to X, unassign it from Y.)?
Regards,
Carl
----- Original Message ----
From: "chandler-users-request at osafoundation.org" <chandler-users-request at osafoundation.org>
To: chandler-users at osafoundation.org
Sent: Monday, March 24, 2008 3:00:04 PM
Subject: chandler-users Digest, Vol 15, Issue 22
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Today's Topics:
1. RE: Is Chandler the Successor to Lotus Agenda? (Jim Cook)
2. Re: Is Chandler the Successor to Lotus Agenda? (Davor Cubranic)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Message: 1
Date: Sun, 23 Mar 2008 18:58:21 -0400
From: Jim Cook <jimcook at panix.com>
Subject: RE: [chandler-users] Is Chandler the Successor to Lotus
Agenda?
To: Chandler users <chandler-users at osafoundation.org>
Message-ID: <20080323230328.270281628F at mailbackend.panix.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
<snip>
Like Mark Weiss and (undoubtedly) many others on this list, I've been
eagerly awaiting Chandler as the reincarnation of Agenda. Although
I've played with a few releases over the years, I haven't committed
myself for two main reasons: (1) Chandler doesn't auto-assign new
items, and (2) there are so many bugs. I do realize that Chandler is
arguably no buggier than any new software, and I acknowledge OSAF for
addressing Chandler's bugs publicly. But auto-assignment is
essential for me, because my work is so unstructured (and arguably
unstructureable).
Anyway, I'm not a programmer, so this may be a silly question, but
why has it been so difficult to implement auto-assignment in
Chandler? Did it just become a non-priority vs calendering and
collaboration? Or was there something about running on DOS (which
was barely more than a file loader) that facilitated doing
auto-assignment in Agenda?
And truly, thanks for all your work. I'm still eagerly (and
optimistically) awaiting Chandler 1.0.
At 12:45 PM 3/23/2008, you wrote:
>Content-Class: urn:content-classes:message
>Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
>
>Davor,
>
>Thanks for the response. I too used Agenda and then Ecco Pro. I
>switched to Ecco after the company I was working for at the time
>adopted the Windows 3.1 platform. We were having problems running
>Agenda from Windows. If I remember correctly it crashed a lot. I
>moved away from Ecco after I purchased a Phillips Velo to replace my
>Zaurus. I couldn't sync the Velo to my Ecco data. I switched to
>Outlook about that time.
>
>You mentioned you were still using Agenda for some
>applications. Can I ask if and how you either print of export the
>data? I tend to write a lot of notes for my three businesses and
>community activities that I am engaged in. Currently I have a
>folder of paper notes looking for a searchable home. The notes are
>tasks and are not time/date driven. I Googled "Lotus Agenda" a few
>weeks ago to see if people were still using it. That's how I found
>about Chandler.
>
>Agenda would be the perfect solution for my application but I am
>reluctant to use it if I can't print or export my data. Any
>thoughts on how you address these issues would be most appreciated.
>
>Thanks!
>
>Mark
>
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: chandler-users-bounces at osafoundation.org
>[mailto:chandler-users-bounces at osafoundation.org] On Behalf Of Davor Cubranic
>Sent: Sunday, March 23, 2008 1:21 AM
>To: Chandler users
>Subject: Re: [chandler-users] Is Chandler the Successor to Lotus Agenda?
>
>Wow, has it really been that long since that announcement?
>
>But I agree, that's what first led me to Chandler, too. And there was a
>lot of Agenda in Chandler initially, reflecting Kapor's influence and
>those announcements, and actually there still is, underneath the UI.
>(See its data engine, with Items, attributes, and relations. I
>sometimes wonder if Chandler's UI could be ripped out and the engine
>used to re-implement Agenda's features and focus.) But calendaring took
>on more prominence with time, and collaboration has had as high a
>priority as personal information management as long as I've been
>following the project. Those are not bad things, either -- the way we
>use computers today is way different than what we did in the DOS years.
>
>And while Chandler is not Agenda, it still works well for me and I use
>it daily as my main information manager. It's better for keeping track
>of tasks, events, and to-dos than for pure information tidbits, so I
>still have some files that I started, and still maintain, in Agenda --
>they just don't translate that well to Chandler's work model and UI.
>Ditto with other tidbits that I still keep in EccoPro (esp. my address
>book!). But honestly, I don't know of another open-source calendaring
>or information management project that works better. (If you do, let me
>know. :-)
>
>Davor
>
>On Saturday 22 March 2008 18:48:47 Mark A. Weiss wrote:
> > Thanks Davor.
> >
> > I was searching Lotus Agenda and found Mitch Kapor's weblog from
> > 10/18/02 where he wrote:
> >
> > "The product, which is central to the whole undertaking, is a new
> > take on the Personal Information Manager. It will handle email,
> > appointments, contacts and tasks, as well as be used to exchange
> > information with other people, and do it all in the spirit of Lotus
> > Agenda, about which more here and here. Agenda, for those who aren't
> > familiar with it, was a DOS product I designed (along with Jerry
> > Kaplan) in the late 1980's which introduced a new kind of database
> > optimized for entering small items of information in a free-form
> > manner, and then adding organizational categories on-the-fly. It was
> > much beloved by a few, despite (or perhaps because) being abandoned
> > by Lotus."
> >
> > That search led me down the path to other postings that tied Agenda
> > to Chandler. OSAF changed direction somewhere down the line. It's a
> > shame because an open source program with Agenda capabilities would
> > be an incredible asset. I imagine that many of the current Agenda
> > users would find it valuable too.
> >
> > Anyway, thanks again for your help.
> >
> > Mark
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: chandler-users-bounces at osafoundation.org
> > [mailto:chandler-users-bounces at osafoundation.org] On Behalf Of Davor
> > Cubranic Sent: Saturday, March 22, 2008 8:07 PM
> > To: Chandler users
> > Subject: Re: [chandler-users] Is Chandler the Successor to Lotus
> > Agenda?
> >
> > On Saturday 22 March 2008 15:52:21 Mark A. Weiss wrote:
> > > Thanks for the response. I am not a programmer, just a plain old
> > > end user. If the ability to parse information to categories on the
> > > fly is not a core part of Chandler's features, why the talk about
> > > it being the successor to Agenda?
> >
> > I don't think I've heard anyone from OSAF make that claim in the last
> > five years, if not longer. See blog.osafoundation.org for their (I'm
> > just a Chandler user, too) current vision and direction.
> >
> > Davor
> > _______________________________________________
> > 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
>_______________________________________________
>chandler-users mailing list
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>http://lists.osafoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/chandler-users
=
Jim Cook <jimcook at panix.com>
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Message: 2
Date: Sun, 23 Mar 2008 16:22:25 -0700
From: Davor Cubranic <cubranic at cs.ubc.ca>
Subject: Re: [chandler-users] Is Chandler the Successor to Lotus
Agenda?
To: Chandler users <chandler-users at osafoundation.org>
Message-ID: <200803231622.25306.cubranic at cs.ubc.ca>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
On Sunday 23 March 2008 09:45:02 Mark A. Weiss wrote:
> You mentioned you were still using Agenda for some applications. Can
> I ask if and how you either print of export the data? I tend to
> write a lot of notes for my three businesses and community activities
> that I am engaged in. Currently I have a folder of paper notes
> looking for a searchable home. The notes are tasks and are not
> time/date driven. I Googled "Lotus Agenda" a few weeks ago to see if
> people were still using it. That's how I found about Chandler.
No, I don't either print or export the data from Agenda. The two Agenda
files that I still use have become sort of "write-only". :-) Fairly
regularly, I enter interesting-sounding wines recommended in a local
paper's wine column, as well as interesting books that I see in book
reviews. But I don't go back to older entries that often, to tell you
the truth, although it does happen every now and then.
Davor
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