Advice, please

[Dan]

I'm making very long term plans for etm and one of the goals is to make it more compatible with importing from and exporting to ical. One of the issues is tasks with prerequisites since ical doesn't support this.  Is the ability to use prerequisites with tasks important to you and, if so, do you use them with both repeating and non-repeating tasks?

Thanks,
Dan

[Sebastian Cyprych]

Hello

> I'm making very long term plans for etm and one of the goals is to make
> it more compatible with importing from and exporting to ical. One of the
> issues is tasks with prerequisites since ical doesn't support this. Is
> the ability to use prerequisites with tasks important to you

I use prerequisities very often.

> if so, do you use them with both repeating and non-repeating tasks?

I haven't been using it with repeating tasks yet, but I can see many
uses of it.

I wouldn't remove this functionality just because iCal doesn't support it.

Best regards

---
Sebastian
--
Poczta wyslana z portalu Panorama Internetu sp. z.o.o

[Dan]

My goal is more to simplify the use of prerequisites than to get rid of them.

For anyone interested, I've attached a sneak preview of what etm 2 might be like sometime (many months) in the future.  This is an early stage so it's a good time to point out what you like and what you don't like.

As always, I rely on you folks to make etm better.

Thanks,
Dan

[lawquest]

I don't use prerequisites yet but plan to some day. 

[Adam]

I virtually never use prerequisites. I find it too difficult to keep the text within the file organized when using them. It basically requires manual editing of the files and when items get added through the etm gui, it gets kind of messy.

[Dan]

Adam,

Prerequisites will be achieved within a single  "group task" which will be edited as a single item. Here is an example:

+ pay bills @s 2012-07-26 @r d &i 30 @f 2012-08-05:2012-07-26
  @i 612a09b9-ec7c-4a13-a785-171493f06772
  @j collect bills &q 1 &f 2012-08-24:2012-08-25
  @j get stamps &q 1 &f 2012-08-25:2012-08-25
  @j get checkbook &q 1
  @j write checks (bills, stamps, checkbook) &q 2
  @j mail checks (bills, stamps, checkbook, write) &q 3

The jobs (tasks within the group) are given by the @j entries and the prerequisites are determined by the &q entries within the jobs. Here collect bills, get stamps, and get checkbook have no prerequisites. The first 3 are required for write checks and the first 4 for mail checks. The individual jobs and finish dates, if any, are only shown for the current repetition.  Finish dates, by the way, have the format "date_done:date_due". Only the group task would be shown for the last completion, if any, and any subsequent repetitions. This is illustrated below:

-Dan