Re: December was a good month for the tasklist project...

On Mon, 2003-01-06 at 14:41, Terry Heatlie wrote:
> >Tor Norbye said:
> >>
> >> Interestingly, "project scheduling" is the most popular search
> >> term... we really ought to address that need. Anyone want to
> >> start working on the project scheduling feature?
> >>
> 
> Anyone who wants to take a crack at this might care to know that
> the jfreechart library (LGPL license) has a GANT chart renderer...
> I haven't tried it, but their support for other things (line
> graphs, pie charts etc) seems pretty decent.
> 
> Standard disclaimers - no connection etc...

Thanks for the pointer. I did an investigation of this a while
back, and here's my task which recorded my findings. JFreeChart
came out on top.

BEGIN:VTODO
UID:nb1036535314707.47@proto/192.129.100.100
CREATED:20021105T222834Z
SUMMARY:Use JFreeChart to handle scheduling view for scheduling feature.
DESCRIPTION:It has Gantt charts! (And some new contributions for improving 
 the\ngantt support\, such as task dragging\, are listed on the project pag
 e. See\nalso http://sourceforge.net/projects/jfreechart\n\nThere's also a 
 freeware scheduling library/program I could consider\nintegrating:\nhttp:/
 /freshmeat.net/projects/egantt/?topic_id=100%2C107%2C92%2C810%2C913\nhttp:
 //freshmeat.net/redir/egantt/29139/url_homepage/jgantt\n(however\, the UI 
 looks a bit ugly so far. It's alpha so perhaps\nit will get better soon.)\n
 \nAnother possibility is FUTURe:\nhttp://freshmeat.net/projects/future/?to
 pic_id=130%2C90\nhttp://www.wolfkeeper.uklinux.net/FUTURe/\nIt's not just 
 a graphing library\; it may have scheduling\ncode etc. we can integrate (o
 h crap\, never mind\,\nit's GPL\, not LGPL'ed.)    And once again\, the\nU
 Is look immature compared to say JFreeChart.\n\nChart2D\nhttp://chart2d.so
 urceforge.net/\nhas no Gantt support\, but is visually most impressive\nof
  the lot. Keep an eye on it in case this is added soon.
PERCENT-COMPLETE:0
CATEGORIES:scheduling
X-NETBEANS-FILENAME:http://www.object-refinery.com/jfreechart/index.html
END:VTODO


I also jotted down the following URL for some scheduling theory
 http://www.ctl.ua.edu/math103/scheduling/schedmnu.htm

Trond wrote:
> I was thinking of finishing up the VALARM support (I mean: implement a
> real support for VALARM ;) and then move on to VEVENTs, but if you
> feel I should put that on hold and start with something else, please
> let me know...

I think VALARM is pretty useful, so I'd say do that first (but at
your current rate I don't think that will take long:)

Then I think perhaps do scheduling before VEVENTs - since VEVENT could
be a pretty large task.

If you're interested in this, let me know and I'll set up a scheduling
skeleton module.

My current thinking is that this would be pretty similar to your
Due date code: just like the new "due" attribute, tasks would
get get a few additional attributes:
  estimated effort
  depends on (list of tasks)
and eventually (but not necessary at first) some more scheduling
properties like lead & lag, time constraints (finish no later
than, finish no earlier than, ... )

These attributes would appear on a separate panel in the New Task
dialog. There would be a checkbox "include in project schedule"
which when selected would ungray the below properties.

Project scheduling is added by a separate scheduling module -
this module registers the additional New Task panel into
the usertask module (which it depends on).

Then there would be a "Show Schedule" action which would compute
an "optimal" (using heuristics) schedule and show it in a gantt
chart (and allow HTML export too!)

Then the second iteration we can add more features, like "resources"
(the ability to schedule tasks for different people, so tasks can
be run in parallel), milestones, vacation days, etc.
 
-- Tor