Re: Managing the ToDo list
On Mon, Jul 16, 2007 at 10:33:41PM +0100, Neil Williams wrote:
> > I think it is great to have a roadmap or planning tool.
>
> Has anyone used group-aware versions of such tools? Planner is very set
> on 'the manager' doing the plan and 'the resources' (yuk) doing the
> work. I'd like a more equitable model.
Maybe the whole idea of dictating a structure is the problem. Planner's
structure may be too primitive. Groupware's data structures are too
complicated (overkill).
> Planner helps this by allowing
> multiple nested tasks without bloating the list of tasks - users can
> expand and collapse tasks and sub-tasks to identify the specific areas
> that suit their inclination. A wiki has a very hard time doing that -
> harder still making it easy to edit whilst retaining the structure.
Maybe a more lightweight solution would be a simple "outliner".
If you just need to efficiently edit a hierarchical structure,
you don't need any special file format. Take e.g. a Tab-indented
plain text file. Meta data may be space separated. Example:
TODO
Do this
[X] Do that
[ ] Do that
[ ] Do that
Do that
Do this
[ ] Do this
Do that
XXX
YYY
Sadly, most tools don't support such a format. They stick with
unnecessary compilcated formats as if they were afraid of other
people being able to edit their files with a text editor. SCNR
A simple format like the above is e.g. very efficiently editable
by vim using "vim-outline". Any editor with some kind of "folding"/
"outliner" should allow efficient editing of such files.
However, no offense against specialized tools. But whatever you
use, you'll be trapped into that tool unless they support such
a simple file format. XML is IMHO no argument as it still expects
you to use a good XML editor. However, any good XML editor would
be more compicated than a simple outliner.
The Wiki has the advantage of using a quite simple format. Not
as simple as it should be, but worlds better than any XML format.
(Using XML for simple hierarchical data structures is IMHO overkill.
It's too simple to benefit from the XML advandages, and suffers from
all the XML disadvantages).
The bad thing is that the Wiki usually has to be edited within
a browser's text area, which is usually nearly as worse as Notepad. ;-)
If you're using special plugins or a text browser (which calls vim
or nano for text areas), you're fine. But most don't.
> Is there a sane way of using nested levels within the wiki? (Separate
> pages make it difficult to get an overview, one long page is too big
> to be manageable.)
This questions has no easy answer. If you have one, you'll be able
to write one of the most useful wikis ever seen.
Maybe in the future there will be some merge of wikis/CMS and
outliners, i.e. a sensible combination of hard structures and free
form pages. Such a tool could also really benefit from the XML
technology.
But currently, the tools just concentrate on either free form
or structure, as if they were different worlds (which they surely
aren't). With one exception: The tools that come closest to that
ideal are - ironically - good XML editors.
Sorry for not providing any solution. I just wanted to reveal the
basic problem behind your discussion.
Greets,
Volker
--
Volker Grabsch
---<<(())>>---
Administrator
NotJustHosting GbR
Reply to: