Re: Hamster contributions

[Toms <toms baugis gmail com>]

Welcome aboard, Jorge!

hamster-applet-devel-list gnome org is our mailing list. Rest of
answers in-line!


On Thu, Oct 9, 2008 at 5:10 PM, Jorge Vargas <jorge vargas gmail com> wrote:
> Hello, I'm writing to you regarding hamster. I have been using it
> since the first of the month and I'm loving it.

The first of the month being first of october or did you actually
break into my computer? :)


>> I'm specially interested in working on the reports, I have already
> setup a clone for this and I'm working on a set of db queries to
> extend db.py and I'm also working on an abstraction layer so we can
> have different outputs (CSV,html,etc.) I plan to have something usable
> at most by the end of the month because I need to export the data to
> report hours for my day job. Now keep in mind this will only be the
> backend as I don't know gtk and I don't have time to sit down and
> learn it, so I was wondering if you or other contributor is willing to
> write the GUI code for my export subsystem. If for some reason that's
> not possible I'm going to write a CLI or at least keep this developers
> only a python UI.

I think i saw some of the activity going on in bugzilla
http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=549604

And also somebody was mentioning command line interface, can't
remember who it was though.

Regarding GUI - it would be lovely if you at least thought a little
about it, because when i did, i ran into major headaches about what
the configuration screen could look like.
Proper way, instead of writing totally customizable export, would be
to target standarts, like iCal and friends. And for the guys who hate
parsing - csv with all the facts we know.

i think i have heard 3 or so people "working on export/etc making
generic something". instead of talking i'd prefer to see patches. they
can be green and ugly and break stuff, just it's better that the idea
is out there, so it can be worked on and discussed about.
so a patch + instructions would be great, Jorge!


>
> I also have some questions about the project which I haven't found on
> the internet.
> 1- which is the current official site?
> http://projecthamster.wordpress.com/ hasn't had anything new for
> several months, the google code stuff is returning denied (probably
> because you deleted it) and the only thing I can find on gnome is the
> bug tracker.

projecthamster.wordpress.com indeed is the official site. Could use
some refreshing though and pointer to list, i guess :)

> 2- is there a way to run 2 instances of hamster? I want to be able to
> run trunk for my development (with a copy of hamster.db) and still use
> my system install for my day work. I really don't want to run trunk
> only as I'm depending on hamster stable to report my day work and I
> can't afford to lose that data.

TRUNK version can be run by going into hamster-applet/hamster folder
and executing "./hamster-applet.py -w" - that will run it in the
checkout folder and in a window.
But you have to remove applet from panel first. Also, keep in mind
that they both will use same database backend
(~/.gnome2/hamster-applet/hamster.db) - so back it up if you are
afraid about your data


> 3- is there an IRC channel? or a mailing list (a dev google group will
>  be awesome)? how do you guys comment and contribute together?

mailing list.

> 4- why bugzilla? It sucks :( is that a requirement for being in gnome?
i beg to differ, bugzilla rules.


> which will be the process of submitting patches?
via bugzilla.



>> These are more regarding the applet itself.
> 5- is there a way to delete a fact that was wrong? last night I left
> the wrong task running and I had to hack the .db file with sqlite3 in
> order to delete the offending task. Even worse I try overwriting it
> with an "add older fact" and I had 2 activities in the same timeframe.
> The last seems like a bug.

pressing delete keyboard button both in day view and overview, and
also clicking "-" icon in overview deletes activity.

> 6- is there a way to rename a fact? like above if you have been doing
> something for 10 minutes but figure out it was the wrong task.

edit activity and change name.

> 7- is there a way to split a fact?

just add another fact overlapping the chosen one. hamster will try
it's best to do splits/inserts

> 8- in the overview window, the Activity column seems to be too narrow,
> as I tend to write longer descriptions. could you make that at least 4
> words? right now on my machine it's cutting down anything that is
> longer than 1 word.

hmmm, the activity column in tree is of variable width and changes,
when you stretch window. the standart is about 40 symbols on my
computer.

if you are referring to graphs, tooltips should be added.

>
> anyway have a great day and keep up the work on this awesome software.
>

Thanks for the letter, and hope to see more of you around!

Toms