Re: [Planner] similarities with JCVGantt

[Lincoln Phipps <lincoln phipps openmutual net>]

> I agree - well, mostly.  Planner needs to concentrate on the basic
> functions of project management. This is where I plan to concentrate my
> time. Integration with mind mapping is in my opinion very much in the
> 'nice to have' category.
>
> <soap box>
> However, if someone wants to take the time and work on integrating a
> mind mapping tool - then great!  This is the great thing about open
> source - right?  We can all work on the tool and add features that are
> important to us. </soap box>
>
> Another approach to this mind mapping thought would be to develop an
> import for it.  If one of these tools saves the mind map in an xml
> format, it should be relatively simple to write a stylesheet to
> transform it to planner format, and add an import menu item for it.


Ah it does ! - the Freemind software (version 0.8.0 which I use on
a Windows machine) creates an XML file format. Not fully impossible thus
to do a bit of XSL to a Planner format, inserting appropriate fields
where they would seem to fit within Planner. They do provide some XSL files
for freemind -> HTML and other examples.

The cascade of nodes within Freemind (or rather mindmaps) is similar
to the summary/tasks within a Project planner WBS.

I actually like how Freemind kind of works as it does allow you to quickly
throw in a lot of ideas and then clean them up. I use Freemind for planning the
outlines of documents (it exports to HTML so I then import to OOWriter which
works quite OK in OpenOffice 2.0). I then edit the document properly
and ignore the mindmap outline. The same procedure *may* also work for some
people with projects i.e. plan the outline in Freemind, have everyone agree
the outline, and then import into Planner for the day-2-day project manager
work on the project and again discard the mindmap outline.

I actually do know of someone in my previous company that used Mindmaps
for just about all his outlines but he then go project managers to turn
that into MS Project plans.

<reality>I can't volunteer right yet though I did do the Export As Planner 0.11
code so I am interested as it is an Import function which would be fun to
try.</reality>

Regards,
Lincoln.