Re: [Planner Dev] printing, Resource Usage, zoom, ...

[Richard Hult <richard imendio com>]

On mån, 2004-08-30 at 19:36 +0200, Andrej Vodopivec wrote:
> I did some more planning using planner. I have quite some remarks on
> bugs? and new features. Let me apologize for not being able to use
> the right words all the time but I hope the ideas will be clear to 
> everybody.

Thanks a lot for all the input, it's greatly appreciated!

We keep track of bugs and feature requests in the bugzilla database, to
make sure we don't forget things and to make it easier to follow up on
each bug.

It would be great if you would consider submitting those bugs (or at
least the ones you think is most important) at:

http://bugzilla.gnome.org/enter_bug.cgi?product=planner

We try to keep one report per bug/request as far as possible.

> -zoom
>    Draw vertical gray lines at the beginning of month,quater,... when weeks
>         are not shown any more. It is difficult to compare timing of
>         tasks when one has 50 lines without any grid.
>         When minor unit is month one could gray out the first full week,
>         when minor unit is quarter one could gray out the first month, ...

So for example, this could be one bug report.

>    Extend horizontal gray lines in Gantt chart into calendar area (option?)
>         like in task view
>    Vertical grid would also come handy in HTML file.

...and this another one, etc.

> -print
>    I have a schedule which extends well into 2006 but I am much more 
> interested
>         into the next quarter details than in 2006 plan or what already 
> happened        since May. I want to print Gantt chart from 1-SEP-2004 
> to 31-DEC-2004.

We already have a report for this:

http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=129141

Feel free to add comments to it.

>         I would not mind if a few extra days are plotted to get a weekly 
> grid.

Good idea, we should probably always start on week start or month start
or year start depending on the zoom I think?

>         Most of my schedule beyond half a year in the future is changing
>         quite a bit so it is a waste of paper to print it in detail.
>     Something like:
>         from-date to-date; 6 weeks per page
>         from-week year to-week year; 1 week per page
>     or
>         this and next three quarter; one quarter per page

Do you mean as preset zoom alternatives when printing, that the user can
choose from?

> -zoom
>         from-date to-date
>         from-week to-week

> -when started as: 'planner fname' window banner says "Unnamed - Imendio 

We actually display the name of the project, not the filename. We could
fallback to the filename if there is no name though.

> -list Resource Usage as
>     Resource
>         Top_task_name Bottom_task_name
>     Like I plan design of three circuits. The database has to be  
> delivered to
>                 a fab. The process is called tape-out. My plan contains
>                 tape-out 2-3 times for each of 3 circuits: mis, mis-tx,cdat
>     The Resource Usage creates a list like:
>         > Igor Grm
>             Igor Grm    tape-out
>             Igor Grm    tape-out
>             Igor Grm    tape-out2
>             Igor Grm    tape-out
>                 ....
>     While I would need:
>         > Igor Grm
>             mis         tape-out
>             cdat        tape-out
>             mis         tape-out2
>             mis-tx      tape-out

Hm, you mean that mis/cdat etc are the parent tasks of the various tape-
out tasks? That sounds like it could be a bit confusing, how about
displaying the WBS code instead, like:

Igor Grm
  Igor Grm     1.2.4 tape-out
  Igor Grm     2.1.3 tape-out
  
Or something I've thought about doing before, only have one column:

Igor Grm
  1.2.4 tape-out
  2.1.3 tape-out

> -display time unit for work,duration,lag,slack: select weeks, days, or hours
>         All time entries should expect values entered using this unit
>         unless w,d,h is appended. This should be selectable in Preferences.

We have some bugs about units across planner. 

> -merge (import) of plans
> -export selected tasks (with subtasks)
> -means to track plan execution
> -(means to track changes in plan)
> -view Resource Usage of multiple plans (files)

Well, that's more of a general super-project feature, where you merge
multiple files, not a resource usage feature. Either that, or a shared
resource pool across multiple projects, but still not a resource usage
view feature but more fundamental change to planner.

> -when 'Fixed duration' is selected for a task one can not assign
> resource
>         percentage: 

We have a report that is somewhat related to this:

http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=135578

> Now, there is the question on who decides on what features will be
> accepted in case I decide to do them. I do not want to spent my
> time doing a feature nobody needs or whoever is in control of the
> main source tree would not accept. I would like to consult with the
> decision makers before I start coding.

As mentioned above, we keep track of bugs/feature requests in bugzilla,
and when someone shows interest in fixing a bug, we assign the bug to
that person and make sure we have a target milestone set and we're set
to go. We're usually very pragmatic :)

Regards,
Richard

-- 
Imendio HB, http://www.imendio.com/