gtg-contributors team mailing list archive

[Izidor Matušov <izidor.matusov@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Baptiste,

to quickly answer your questions:

> 1) I thinks there is two good places for this menu. The first one is
> to integrate him in the calendar widget (Like the current extension).
> The second is in the topbar (like this extension : [1]). Which do you
> prefer ?
> Personnaly, I think that the first is the better idea. But what do YOU
> think about that ?

I think that the calendar widget is really awesome idea. It would create 
more semantic (all my appointments and tasks are in the same place).

> 2) As you can see in the previous sketch, I would like to list tasks.
> I have also different ideas here.
> First, I could list the tasks of the current day. By a click on one, I
> could show the subtasks on the same menu (like the sketch). The
> problem is that I can't display all subtasks of a task (If there is a
> task with 3, 4, or more levels).
> My second idea is to display title of tasks of the current day. When
> the user click on the title, a new window shows all the subtasks of
> the selected task.
> So what's your opinon? Show the tasks only in 2 levels, or show all
> the subtasks in a new window?

Let me ask you a couple of questions. What would you like to do with 
those tasks shown in the calendar widget? When would you like to access 
those tasks? What kind of tasks would you like to access?

For me the answer would be: I would like to check  the current tasks 
which I can work on or I am working on at the moment. I would like to 
see them when I am too lazy to open the main window or just want to see 
a next task from my task queue. Seeing the title of task would be for 
the most of the time enough for me. I might want to display details so 
clicking on the title would open GTG editor. The ultimate feature would 
be to mark a task as done directly from the extension. Of course, tasks 
should be sorted somehow so I know what is the most important thing I 
should work on. When I have too many tasks, show only few, the most 
important tasks.

My proposed solution according to my answer would be to show only 
workable tasks. (Do you know and use WorkView feature from GTG?) It 
means to show a task only if it doesn't have any subtasks, if start date 
is already passed and due date is not someday or none of its tags is 
hidden in workview (e.g. tag @waitForEmail )

Integration with the calendar widget would be pretty awesome! I could 
see tasks which I can do on every day I choose. If you manage to do 
that, it would be perfect!

I would like to talk in general about your project and give you few 
tips. I read your proposal [3].

What kind of DBus function do you need? I think the most of them are 
already available. See GTG/gtk/dbuswrapper.py

We have search feature which was done by last year GSoC student Joao. 
Recently, a DBus function for searching was added. It would be pretty 
awesome to allow search for tasks from GNOME Shell overview mode (where 
you can search for application). The best thing is that it should be 
very simple to implement that, look at SSH search extension [4]. Would 
you like to do that?

Generally, I feel from your proposal, you would like to provide 3 
actions for every task: show it/edit it, mark it as done, delete it. I 
propose to drop off delete option. You can't undo it -- it is a 
dangerous action. Don't let the user to do something bad easily. Make 
him to open the task or show the task browser and then delete it. It 
would simplify the extension as well. I recommend to show/edit a task 
whenever possible. When the task is opened, user can do anything with 
it. Get rid of the popup [5] and just show the editor. Having another 
way how to mark a task as done is great. We would facilitate completing 
tasks by making it easy to mark task as done. (One click is already an 
enormous difference.) Make it easy to do desired things (show the 
editor, mark as done) and put roadblocks on the way to do dangerous 
things (delete a task)

I like your 6 notification popup. Having a reminder feature looks cool. 
But it needs further discussion. Alex proposed to have a notification on 
start of GNOME like "You should do today X tasks".

My general suggestion would be to not try to build a GUI on the top of 
GNOME shell but to just integrate with it. The user won't be able to do 
everything directly from GNOME Shell. Only important action in the right 
place.

I suppose you are going to create one "big" extension for GTG with many 
small nifty features for integration (like calendar panel and search in 
the overview mode)

Those are just my opinions, feel free to argue about them or reject them.

Where are you going to develop your extension? Github or Launchpad? I 
would like to subscribe to it, watch your progress and give you an early 
feedback.

Looking forward to your extension!

Cheers,
Izidor

PS: We are tracking desktop integration in a blueprint [7]. Feel free to 
modify it or not.

3: 
http://www.google-melange.com/gsoc/proposal/review/google/gsoc2012/bsaleil/9002
4: https://github.com/brot/gnome-shell-extension-sshsearch
5: http://baptiste.saleil.free.fr/popup.png
6: http://baptiste.saleil.free.fr/notif.png
7: https://live.gnome.org/gtg/blueprints/desktopintegration