[Design] Collection Confusion - News at 11

[Jim Sowers]

Hi All,

Hope you will take the time to read this one.  From the outset I was a
little confused with the use/sharing/restoration of collections.  At
first I was just muddling around figuring out what was going on, but
now I think I have some insights into real areas of confusion.  (My
discussion is limited to collections used for calendars, but there may
be higher-order issues that kick in as collections cross
functionality, i.e., include calendars, email, tasks, etc.)


Background

When you first install Chandler and enter the calender mode, you see
"My Calendar" and "Trash" in the upper left corner.  My Calendar
represents your main collection, and Trash is a special collection of
disposed items.

Now, suppose your user name is "fred".  If you do not create any new
collections, but simply share My Collection in calendar mode, it will
create a collection on the Cosmo server called "fred_s_calendar".
This is not obvious, and the only way to really know this is to pay
close attention to the URLs is supplies for sharing Read or Read/Write
access.

My initial thought in sharing was simply to be able to backup my
data--I wasn't focused at all on sharing with others.  Thus, I didn't
really expect to need to know the collection name, other than "My
Collection".

However, as I uploaded and installed new versions of Chandler, when I
would go to "Restore Shared Collections" I did not see "My Calendar",
but rather "spincycle_s_calendar" (my user name is spincycle).  So I
would restore that name.  But then, rather than migrating the data to
My Calendar, it sat in a new collection called "spincycle_s_calendar".
 Now, I wasn't sure what to do: use the spincycle calendar? use My
Calendar? delete spincycle?

I made the mistake of putting new items in My Calendar and publishing
it.  I later discovered, that this caused the creation of a collection
called, "spincycle_s_calendar-1", and then the next time
"spincycle_s_calendar-2"  Of course, now I know how to deal with this,
but man, this is going to confuse the heck out of a lot of newbies.

The confusion got worse as I discovered and tested using additional
collections: one for work, one for social, etc.  My Caldendar seemed
to be the place to view everything overlayed, but it is also a place
to store things.

On top of that, deleting collections does not remove them from the
server. This is actually good, however, at the time of "Restoring
Shared Collections", you ought to be able to tell what has been
deleted and what is currently active -- in case you've lost track of
the names  you were currently using.

Potential Solutions

1. Don't use the name "My Calendar" -- personally I HATE the whole
damn Microsoft "My <data type>" model.  When I'm looking for files,
everything starts with letter M.  Name the initial Collection the
username: SpinCycle or Fred or Mitch or Pieter or Mimi or Priscilla
:-)

OR

2. Make the "My Calendar" simply a view overlay rather than an actual
storage collection.  Thus, you might start with another collection
called "personal", and then add from there, and then view them all
together in "My Calendar".  I dunno, this might be a complete re-work,
and confusing too.

OR

3. Document this and have FAQs and pop-up windows in Chandler that
make the current model crystal clear in advance.

Anyway, I am now using a collection called Sowers_All.  No more
putting anything in "My Calendar".

Hope this was helpful.  (And if there is a way to permanently delete
some of my old collections from Cosmo, let me know :-)

Jim (at Eritrean Cafe in Oakland)