Re: Fwd: Using uncertain date information in Chandler

This functionality would be awesome, but while I can see how it would
work nicely for Gantt charts, I'm not so sure in a regular calendar view
that most people are used to (and use most often). Calculating a
"best-guess" date "on-the-fly" and showing that in calendars sounds a
little too much like magic.  One could also treat fuzzy deadlines as a
sort of multi-date event that starts off almost faded out and then gets
more visually solid as the deadline approaches, but that seems like it
would take a lot of real estate.

Davor


On Tue, 13 Nov 2007, Mimi Yin wrote:

> 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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