Re: Idea For Semantic Text-Based GTD Application

[אנטולי קרס נר <tombackton gmail com>]

Hey Luc and list,

I've been planning and designing a language for data modeling and
description, somewhat based on concepts borrowed from Python (which I
learned in the process).

I'm now writing a tutorial, and it looks quite simple and
straight-forward, and the language is very simple. Very soon I'll finish
the tutorial and I'd like to have it reviewed and hear comments and
advice. Is anyone interested?

With a polished language I'll be able to proceed and write a parser and
command-line tools, which can serve (with their underlying library) as a
base for larger systems and GUI app integration (Gnote, GTG, etc.)

regards,
Anatoly


On ד', 2013-05-29 at 21:10 +0300, Luc Pionchon wrote:
> Hi Anatoly,
>
> if you really get such simple enough language, you certainly will get
> some users.
>
> I see you are planning for more usages, though about TODO apps, did
> you see todotxt [1] which is basically a text based todo/GTD. They
> have a relatively simple language [2]. Is it similar to what you are
> thinking about?
>
> [1] http://todotxt.com/
> [2] https://github.com/ginatrapani/todo.txt-cli/wiki/The-Todo.txt-Format
>
> I think you should go ahead and start to write examples, so people
> could grasp it, and you will also get a better view of the
> feasibility.
>
> Don't care much about "user testing", it's up-side down business
> thinking. Do something useful, and you'll get some users.
>
> go ahead!
> In any case that is certainly a good learning experience
>
> On 29 May 2013 18:02, אנטולי קרסנר <tombackton gmail com> wrote:
> > Hello everyone,
> >
> >
> > I'm an individual not working on any Gnome module. I'll try not to get
> > into much detail (likely to fail on this one), but here's the idea I
> > have:
> >
> > After reading about existing GTD software tools I made the following
> > conclusions:
> >
> > * There are GUI tools
> > * There are plain-text solutions
> > * There are pen-and-paper solutions
> > * There are text-based applications
> >
> > GUI tools have lots of features and visual widgets, but they somehow
> > fail to satisfy most people. At the same time, plain text seems to
> > become more and more popular. After reading I made these conclusions:
> >
> > * Each person has her own way of thinking, her own way of how the brain
> > works. Therefore, each person should have a personally tailored solution
> >
> > * GUI tools, and GTD tools in general, tend to make the false assumption
> > of "everyone is like me" and "one size fits all", which is why most
> > tools fail to become widely popular.
> >
> > * Emacs Org-Mode is quite successful as a GTD tool, thanks to its
> > flexibility and extensibility, but lacks an intuitive interface, which
> > limits its adoption despite the success of Org-Mode
> >
> > * A next-generation tool should have the extensibility of a plain-text
> > system, and the convenience, ease-of-use and efficiency of a visual tool
> >
> >
> >
> > Therefore, I decided to create a language for definition of properties
> > and classes, intended for be used for describing tasks, timelines,
> > projects, etc. This language is easy enough for non-programmers to use,
> > and yet is expressive enough for practical use. It borrows concepts from
> > RDF, OWL and scripting languages.
> >
> > On top of this language there will be a set of text-based tools allowing
> > easy manipulation of the text. It means users can edit the files in
> > plain text, but also have convenient tools and utilities for easier
> > processing and visualization, similar to Org-Mode.
> >
> > On top of that there may be task/project-related definitions, a
> > specialized text editor and/or Gedit plugins, and a flexible GUI app
> > which replaces the "one for all" concept with a "personally tailored to
> > a user's mental model" concept, which seems to work very successfully
> > with plain text and Emacs Org-Mode.
> >
> >
> > Existing free software I found:
> >
> > - Gedit (Gnome's plain text editor, extensible with plugins)
> > - Emacs Org-Mode
> >
> > That's all. All other tools, including all GTD and To-do apps for
> > Gnome/GNU, are either scripts intended for power users, or have a
> > limited scope which is not flexible enough to customize.
> >
> >
> > An existing GUI app for GTD called Getting Things Gnome (GTG) has great
> > potential, but I'd like to back it up using a flexible text-based
> > approach which is then used to describe semantic entities and attach
> > them to program objects. This would supply both the flexibility of text,
> > the convenience of GUI and automatic translation to RDF, which means
> > instant Semantic Desktop integration (using Tracker and Zeitgeist).
> >
> >
> > *** The Question ***
> >
> > My question is, what do you think? Does this idea sound useful? To me
> > personally, it seems to fill the gap between plain text (which has no
> > visualization and productivity utilities) and convenient GUI (which
> > current is mostly not flexible enough).
> >
> > NOTE: Non-free software already exists, which uses plain text as a
> > backend, such as Taskpaper:
> > http://www.hogbaysoftware.com/products/taskpaper
> >
> >
> > regards,
> > Anatoly
> >
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