On Mar 24, 2008, at 9:08 PM, Carl Lemp wrote:
Hi Mimi,
Isn't OSAF a little small to have a bureaucracy already: "No, no,
you need to be talking to the other department over there." :)
Hi Carl, yea it's a bit confusing at first for users who are also
interested in design :) We're hoping to keep "working" discussions
mostly on the Dev List so that the users list can feel more like a
help center.
Anyway, until my subscription to the Chandler-dev list (that is the
correct list, right?) is approved, I'll just respond here. I
understand what you are describing and it would be a more powerful,
but more complex approach. The good news is it sounds like most of
what I would want is already there. To provide the same
functionality as what I was describing, the saved query-based
collection would need to remain updated as items are added after
the collection was created. Since you brought it up in this
context, I assume it would.
When I have used a PIM in the past, I found that I only used
features that were easy to remember and required no pre-defined
structure. It would be great if there was a query language to
fulfill the occasional complex need but, most of the time, I would
want to use a pre-built form where I didn't have to remember any
syntax or vocabulary or structure. A form like Google's Advanced
Search would work fine for me 95% of the time. The most important
part of the rules is that I shouldn't have to think about them when
I'm typing items. So, if I built a rule based collection with
"Title = Call" or "Title contains Call" then I'd have to remember
to put "Call" in the title for the item to show up in the
collection. On the other hand, if my rule is that "Item contains
call or telephone or telcon or cell phone" then almost any item to
do with a telephone would show up in the collection and I don't
have to think about it again. From my perspective, it's better to
end up with a few extra items in a collection than to miss a few.
If I still find I'm missing items, I can go back and refine the
rule to add more synonyms or related phrases.
That's how search works today. It just searches for anything that
matches the string you type in. It would definitely be the easiest
way to get started on this feature!
When you say you have thought of using the detail view to define
rules, do you mean the detail view of the item? If so, would some
version of that form be associated with the collection as well?
Sure, it's just a simple matter of implementing it ;)
Would I have to distinguish between Calls in the title and Calls in
the body of the item?
Yea, so you wouldn't even need to invent a structured syntax. You
could just use the text field to do a full text search and then save
it as a collection.
If you catch extra items in the query, you can always exclude them
from the collection.
If you miss some items, you can always include them in the collection.
So the workflow might be like:
1. Cmd or Ctrl-F to put keyboard focus into the Toolbar text field in
"Search Mode"
2. Type string
3. Go to Collection menu>>New Search Collection (or Save Search or
something like that)
4. New collection appears in Sidebar and updates itself
Is this roughly the kind of thing you were thinking of?
Mimi
What I would prefer to do if I wanted to see a list of calls is to
create a collection named Calls then flag the collection to search
for items that match the collection name. If that didn't catch
everything I wanted, I'd go back to the properties of the
collection and add some other words or phrases to match on.
Carl
----- Original Message ----
From: Mimi Yin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: Chandler Dev <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Cc: Carl Lemp <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Monday, March 24, 2008 7:28:53 PM
Subject: Re: [chandler-users] Re: Automatic Assignments
Hi Carl,
Not to keep re-routing you just for the fun of it! but I think you'll
grab more developer attention if we have this discussion over on the
Chandler Development List. If you haven't subscribed already, you can
sign up here: http://lists.osafoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/
chandler-dev
We've talked about simply allowing you to define queries using in the
Toolbar Text Field as a part of Search. So instead of searching for a
text string, you might able to search on a particular attribute:
Title=Call:
It'd be harder to do things like: Anything in January of 2008 or All
LATER items without calendar and alarm dates. You'd start having to
invent your own query syntax ;)
And then you could simply save this query as a dynamically generated
collection. (Note, under the hood, all Chandler collections are "rule-
based" *and* will allow inclusions and exclusions, aka items that
don't match the rule.)
What we don't have today is a way for users to define rules.
We've also talked about using the detail view itself as a way to
define rules. (Gmail does this nicely with its filter-builder.) as
well as GUI rule builders that would allow you to define complex
rules. But I think a simple way to define rules through the Search
bar would be a great start.
I'm going to post a response on the users list asking people for some
specific examples of queries they'd like to define.
Best,
Mimi
On Mar 19, 2008, at 9:13 PM, Carl Lemp wrote:
> 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 <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Cc: Carl Lemp <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> 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
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> chandler-users mailing list
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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