I am forwarding an email exchange with Rick Gruber-Reimer that is a
different take on the "soft-deadlines" discussion we've been having
for the past month: http://lists.osafoundation.org/pipermail/design/
2007-October/007757.html
The functionality Rick describes below is something he built for a
planning tool years ago and he has promised to try and get some
screenshots together. Looking forward to seeing them!
Mimi
Begin forwarded message:
From: Mimi Yin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: November 13, 2007 9:43:07 AM PST
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Cc: Heikki Toivonen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, Jeffrey Harris
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Using uncertain date information in Chandler
Hi Rick,
The short answer is Yes! This kind of flexibility around dates is
very much in keeping with our notion of 'fuzzy time-management' in
Chandler.
We currently have a way of specifying events that span date-ranges,
but are distinct from all-day / multi-day events. We call them
'anytime events'. The idea is that you can schedule things for 'Any
time Today' or 'Any time during some time span.'
However, we'd like to expand fuzzy-date functionality to include
things like: End of Week, End of Nov 2007, some time this month.
See discussion re 'Soft deadlines' on the design list: http://
lists.osafoundation.org/pipermail/design/2007-October/007757.html
See more in-line...
On Nov 12, 2007, at 5:06 AM, Rick Gruber-Riemer wrote:
Hi Mimi
As you can see in the forwarded email below Heikki thinks that I
should discuss an idea about using uncertain date information in
Chandler (desktop) with you. Let me describe shortly my thoughts:
Basically I would like to be able to be precise about not being
precise regarding dates ("uncertainty). E.g. if I mean "End of
November 2007" I have to choose a precise date in the calendar in
all tools I know and would potentially pick the 25th of November
2007. But that is wrong, because my best guess is "End of November
2007", which typically means somewhere between the 20th and 30th
of November. The same applies to "middle of 2008", "beginning week
24", "first quarter of 2009". When you then know more about the
probable date you can always get more precice -- e.g. from "first
quarter of 2009" to "beginning of February 2009" to "2nd of
February 2009".
So depending on how certain you are about a date (precice => day/
month/year; else week level, month level, quarter level, year
level) you first pick the uncertainty type and then you are
presented with a different set of drop-down menues. E.g. week-
number, quarters or months, year is always displayed. If the date
is uncertain you additionally get to choose one out of four
values: "", "beginning", "middle", "end". In the UI the date is
represented as a natural language string. Behind the scenes the
info is NOT stored as a date, but for graphical representation in
e.g. a calendar or GANTT several virtual dates are calculated on-
the-fly: earliest, best-guess and latest date and then this
uncertainty is shown (in a calendar view probably only the best-
guess with some icon indicator for uncertainty and an extra text
representation; in a GANTT you can show the whole uncertainty range.)
I programmed this as a planning tool years ago with GANTT-chart
and chronogramm representation -- and am still missing it in my
daily tools. There are a lot of display, data storage (e.g.
VCALENDAR is not enough) etc. challenges and it would probably not
do well as a plugin in Chandler - but evt. ok to start with. To
begin with dates/milestones are enough, my dream is naturally to
have date-ranges, too.
=> Is this something you have been discusing before? If yes:
thumbs up or down?
Thumbs up.
=> Would it be stretching the idea of Chandler too much?
Nope. It's dead-on and very much in keeping with where we'd like to
go.
Thanks Rick. Best,
Mimi
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