Has there been any thought of a plug-in and event architecture for extensions off the beaten path?
From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Keith Gaddis Sent: December 29, 2008 9:55 PM Cc: tracks-discuss Subject: Re: [Tracks-discuss] subprojects, multi-user, and delegation functionality Hello everyone, Sorry to go awol after my original post, but holiday travel gets in the way of my communications sometimes... I agree completely that the features I brought up should be done with careful forethought, which is part of the reason I brought them up here. Obviously there would need to be some modifications to the UI, which should be unobtrusive and ignorable, yet easily accessible. I'm planning on mocking up some UI changes to reflect the proposed changes I've brought up, but I haven't gotten to that yet. Briefly, I find the number of boxes on the project page to be somewhat distracting, so I'd like to consolidate all of the existing information into a single box, and use lists to display the different information, adding to that a list of child projects within the project, if any. Actions for a project include only immediate child actions, not all descendant actions (though each child project should be listed with a count of its own actions.) At the top of the project page, I'd remove the navigation link for next and previous actions, replacing it with a breadcrumb that traces back to the top-level project. Regarding task dependencies, I realize that may have different meanings to different people, so here's the user scenario I had in mind when I brought it up: sometimes a task or project stalls until another task or project is complete, so the idea is that you can link those tasks so that when the independent project/task is completed, the dependent task becomes a next-action automatically, or moves from a deferred to an active state. This would be really useful with multi-user interaction, where i can delegate a specific task to another user in the system, and when that user marks it as done my task is automatically flagged as active. Obviously multi-user capability isn't there yet, and the dependency feature will require a model and UI for notifications and/or watching other tasks and projects. I've started working on some subproject functionality and UI changes, using better_nested_set to replace acts_as_list. I'll post my code to my github when I've got it working well enough to have others take a look at it. --keith On Mon, Dec 29, 2008 at 3:54 AM, Reinier Balt <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: For task dependencies on the homepage, you can consider using a tree like view. Todos with decedents show a plus which you can use to show all descendants. Todos without decedents have the same look as current tracks. This won't easily work for todos with multiple parents (depending on multiple todos), because tracks currently can't handle multiple instances of the same todo on the home page. Using the tree like view, the user has the choice what to see. Reinier Van: [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> [mailto:[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>] Namens Eric Allen Verzonden: vrijdag 26 december 2008 22:29 Aan: tracks-discuss Onderwerp: Re: [Tracks-discuss] subprojects, multi-user, and delegation functionality I agree strongly with Reiner that this new functionality would need to be discreet. From what I'm seeing it sounds very un-GTD, so it's outside the scope of what I see Tracks as. The great thing about open source is that you can add it, though! As long as we can work in the functionality without complicating Tracks for the rest of us, it seems fine to me. As for task dependencies, that stalled for a few months. I've still got some code, but I never came up with a good UI for how to deal with arbitrary dependencies. I was mostly sketching out the infrastructure for it to be as general as possible, but the only manifestation would be setting projects to only show one action at a time (complete tasks in order). On Dec 23, 2008, at 11:37 PM, Reinier Balt wrote: Hi Keith, I remember a discussion about being able to see another users todos with Joseph Method (tristil @ g mail dot com) but I don't know if that resulted in any code. 1) I think we could combine subprojects with the goals request. In a way it's the same (as responsibilities can be considered a goal). Personally I manage subprojects using tags and use the tag view to see all todos related to the complete project. I agree on what you say about sub-actions. I think implementing convert-todo-to-project will help people who run into these use cases 2) I don't know what you mean with dependencies. Eric Allen is working on todo-dependencies. You really need to think this one through as there are a lot of infrastructure items to this. Like a notification system. Also the gui part seem tricky to me. But then again, who doesn't like a challenge :-) I think that for both 1) and 2) we need to be carefull on the gui side. Tracks is all about being simple and flexible so you can use it the way you want (and not dictated by some strict workflow). Also, the gui currently is getting really crowded and is in need of simplification. I think that it is important that new functions like these should only be noticed if you use them, i.e. if you don't use them, you don't see anything of it. Reinier Van: [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> [mailto:[email protected]<http://ette.org.uk>] Namens Keith Gaddis Verzonden: zaterdag 20 december 2008 21:43 Aan: [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> Onderwerp: [Tracks-discuss] subprojects, multi-user, and delegation functionality Is anyone actively working on functionality to cover subprojects or multi-user interaction along the lines of delegation and watching someone else's actions/projects? These are high-priority items for me, and if no one else is working on them, I'd like to take a crack at it, or work with someone to avoid duplication of effort. I've seen tickets in Trac for these functions, but they don't seem to be updated recently (there's also multiple tickets covering each, so i may be missing the active ticket). Here are my implementation thoughts: 1) subprojects: this can be really simple. All that really needs to be done is add a 'parent' field to the project model and make some UI updates. Projects with null parents correspond to top-level projects, which can be thought of as areas of responsibility. subprojects have another projectid assigned to them for a parent. hiding a project cascades down the tree, marking it visible flows up the tree. One of the tickets mentions sub-actions, which i think is kind of a corruption of the metaphor--actions should by definition be discrete pieces of work or steps to be taken, not aggregations of them. this would also make it really easy to implement conversion of an action to a project, setting the parent id to the original action's project, which is also something I'd really like to see, though its far lower on my priority list. 2) multi-user functions first i'd like to implement 'watches', which would allow one user to view the projects, actions, and notes of another user. further down the line it could be used to implement notifications and dependencies. The watch UI would allow a watching user to copy a project definition to his own list of projects, and optionally its child actions/projects. second step in this would be to allow a user to delegate an action or project to another user. To do so, it would seem like all you would need to do is reassign the user_id. As a first go-round it would fit my purposes merely to allow any user to delegate to any other, but it could be implemented in such a way as to allow a delegation to follow a request/accept model. So now that I've laid out what I'd like to work on, does anyone have any thoughts about it? Is anyone else working on this or similar functionality, or in a different direction? Best regards, Keith _______________________________________________ Tracks-discuss mailing list [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> http://lists.rousette.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/tracks-discuss _______________________________________________ Tracks-discuss mailing list [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> http://lists.rousette.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/tracks-discuss
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