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I agree with much of what you say. Although some of this blurs the look and feel of TDL, with its functionality and that of its interface. Something I have struggled with.
I agree re the PIM thing. I also find it crazy that tasks and calendars are separate (and I never used Palm). I have been using a hard-copy diary to achieve this! By the way, I have started putting some ideas down for a 'day-view', which is essentially a PIM in disguise. Hopefully will send this through to Dan soonish.
I also wonder at the simplification that Google promotes. So many task managers with a single level if tasks. Do people not want this? Google has removed functionality from its own software many times, with the excuse that it was not used enough - so it is lowest common denominator stuff.
But as you say, aligning with Google is smart, as it is everywhere. Being able to pull calendar info from Google calendar into TDL would be great. The only issue is they reserve the right (and exercise it) to change functionality and services any time...
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zajchapp wrote:
I agree with much of what you say. Although some of this blurs the look and feel of TDL, with its functionality and that of its interface. Something I have struggled with.
Yep - tdl is a task manager, not a calendar. Problem is ... once a task has a date ... one probably would like to see it on their calendar - which is a separate program. Let alone, if that date has passed or the task is completed. The first suggests either a moving calendar entry date or an overdue task, the second suggests communications between disparate programs to say check off that task and assign a date (today?) to the next in the sequence. (Assuming dependency between tasks. And now we're into something a la MS Project.)
I agree re the PIM thing. I also find it crazy that tasks and calendars are separate (and I never used Palm). I have been using a hard-copy diary to achieve this! By the way, I have started putting some ideas down for a 'day-view', which is essentially a PIM in disguise. Hopefully will send this through to Dan soonish.
It makes sense depending upon where you're coming from. Once a task has a date, it makes sense that there be a calendar entry. The reverse not so - an undated calendar entry? When the very nature of a calendar is to plunk the item into a date slot? Otherwise one my put in to the empty space before the 1st of a month (on that fridge calendar) [do soon, this month, ?] - but at that point it's really just an undated task. On a calendar. And we're back to the blur between calendars and tasks - and tdl is ostensibly a task manager, not a calendar/diary. Arrgghh! What's a poor programmer (Dan) to do?
I also wonder at the simplification that Google promotes. So many task managers with a single level if tasks. Do people not want this?
Evidently not. Or, probably most importantly - not that they're willing to pay for. Even $2 in play.google. There are few commercial consumer level products - even. Also, being fair, ultimately such functionality requires a database, and until recently very few lightweight (cross-platform) databases have been available. Be it sqlite, firebird (which requires running a server if on a network), or even xml - relatively recent concepts, not well known, and not cross-platform / universal.
And the world keeps moving - google having since come along, and ... wherefore btree? (Long ago / DOS single file database routines.)
Google has removed functionality from its own software many times, with the excuse that it was not used enough - so it is lowest common denominator stuff.
The boggling thing is twofold: Google Tasks have sub-tasks, wonderful - but Tasks/Calendar not 'well' integrated and going nowhere. And google tasks not expanding with necessary attributes to completely correlate with task managers (like TDL). (Let alone Google Calendar going nowhere - witness, inability to check off 'done' on calendar.)
But as you say, aligning with Google is smart, as it is everywhere. Being able to pull calendar info from Google calendar into TDL would be great. The only issue is they reserve the right (and exercise it) to change functionality and services any time...
Fair enough, but probably not likely - how much less functionality can they put into either, at this point. Let alone if the world ecosystem has meshed with google, 'great unhappiness in the world' if/when then change things. I suspect, thought, that the underlying api calls wouldn't likely change. Even if a particular call becomes deprecated, or functionality added doesn't make it into that deprecated call.
It gets worse ... contexts. So you have work and home, and you change something on one side or the other. Complexity. Let alone (as I just learned from wiki best practices article) TDL supports multiple contexts. (Work@Home, and most context aware task managers have a limited number of contexts, unlike TDL.) So, dated, context tasks, need to go into a unique (personal) calendar [Home, vs work] - tough for the user to manage superficially. Most merely have 'stuff' to do.
GTD suggesting @Shopping contexts, PDA's typical use-case being google calendar, and ... it's all a mess.
Sort of why I suggest a meld with Pimlical makes a certain amount of intuitive sense.
In the mean time, a direct if I put a date on a task, post it to the calendar, would be useful. If limited.It'd be start.
Problem is - pull that string, and a great whacking amount of other string is going to come with it. (People wanting calendar entries to dynamically change with each task change - not through some sort of global sync process at TDL start / stop.)
I don't much wonder why the functionality isn't there - but I still want it.
Answer: TDL has to reverse takeover the world, becoming the new Google.
Get on that Dan, would you please? (-:
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Bill
If you want to be yet more useful to me/TDL (and I'm not suggesting that you do ), you could take this big conversation (which is already somewhat overwhelming me with possibilities) and put it on the wiki, distilled into more manageable pieces.
Most people probably think that writing TDL is all about coding, yet for me 'thinking' is the more important activity, and I find that my thinking can get bogged down in too much information, hence the desire to have other help out in this area.
ps. As an aside, you might also be interested in this conversation[^] too which occurred just before you came onboard.
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.dan.g. wrote:
If you want to be yet more useful to me/TDL (and I'm not suggesting that you do ), you could take this big conversation (which is already somewhat overwhelming me with possibilities) and put it on the wiki, distilled into more manageable pieces.
Only just saw this now. I hear you. Except ... my mind sort of blows up trying to grapple with how to approach / organize / lay out. If something occurs to me, I'll give it a whirl.
But this also shows how some additional facility of some sort would be useful. (Not tracs, but perhaps that sort of thing. If sf were it, it would be more used than it is.) Feature requests, voting? / prioritization with effort estimates, bug reports, discussion threads? Even a wiki? [As in self-signup. Not that I have any idea how you avoid spam.]
Most people probably think that writing TDL is all about coding, yet for me 'thinking' is the more important activity, and I find that my thinking can get bogged down in too much information, hence the desire to have other help out in this area.
Fair enough. Probably because you are the apparent single face of all things TDL. I sure get the one has to wrap their mind about a beastie, an approach, and how to integrate with what's already there, before coding can even start. Then there's the which, next, question.
ps. As an aside, you might also be interested in this conversation[^] too which occurred just before you came onboard.
10-4. Didn't mean to be making feature requests. Was intending more towards trying to throw out spit balls for reaction vis a vis what might be quickly / easily done to make TDL 'prettier'. I know / knew the whole calendar thang was / is something people have wanted even before stuff comes out of beta. And if it were easy, it would already be there. Let alone, the world has been a moving target - the lack of Android, or a local Android sync, let alone an on-board native database?, meant anyone wishing to do sync had to reinvent the wheel on their own. == non-trivial. Only to have the rug pulled out from under their design feet within a couple of years.
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Quote: But software does not live by code alone - it must integrate with the rest of one's life, including calendars.
Yes, I like this.
I share many things in your post. Even though escaping, or goes beyond, the order of Dan ("TDL is ugly?")
I highlight only one aspect:
I think this is what we all want: to integrate the different parts of our lives (mails, tasks, events, scheduling meetings), not repeat or duplicate efforts.
But TDL can not do all (emails, etc). But can keep trying to integrate even better with other programs (Outlook, google calendar and other big). IMHO I think this will be the key to the future success of TDL.
I speak in my reality:
Outlook is a program that has sought to integrate all this. But it has many shortcomings (especially task management. Calendar is every day more interesting).
Everyone has their way of working ... and organize your life.
In my case, I would be satisfied if I could get TDL and better integrate Outlook.
I think others will want to integrate with TDL alia: Google calendar, etc..
Dan, you have something very important in hand. TDL has great potential. I am a great software tester and I have tried many! Go ahead!
Armando
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Came across this, some interesting points.
https://groups.google.com/d/msg/mylifeorganized/ym_57dou36s/Q4AwqpraqsEJ
"One thing that TDL does better is providing a rich text mode of the comment area. One thing that does it worse is the filtering. Though TDL has list and tree views/tabs, they use the same filtering rules. And I always confuse the controls for filtering with those for editing, as they look similar. In MLO the filtering is nicely tucked away into views. Having to manually set filters is cumbersome and error-prone. The principle of MLO of having views/tabs on the same data with different, customizable filtering rules is much better. By the way, that's one thing that many other task management tools get wrong."
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Apologies for the length... Some ideas for your consideration.
I will put aesthetics largely aside, as has been mentioned above, they are dictated by fashion. And the look, while quite 'stand-alone' application is fine in my opinion. However, I like an interface that can be configured to the way I work, presents the information in a logical, tidy, consistent fashion without visual clutter, and is efficient to use. Pretty comes second to that, but is nice when it can be achieved.
I have several suggestions for improving the TDL interface below. Some blur between UI usability and application functionality, but I am not sure that can be helped.
Visible information
Some of the visible items in the interface aren't always needed. It would be useful to be able to hide them when not needed. I personally find the filter bar superfluous most of the time. I am not really sure of the purpose of the Project edit box – could the tab name be directly editable? If in-grid editing was possible, could hide the edit bar also. I would hide these either in a column to the left of the tasklist (like All-in-one sidebar in Firefox), or at the top, in place of the filter-bar.
Further, I think it would be useful to hide the tasklist tabs that you won't use for a particular tasklist (e.g. Calendar).
Two examples: http://i.imgur.com/cirIzeK.png[^] and http://i.imgur.com/W2Zhmt4.png[^]
'Views'
TDL could be provided with 3 default views, that are easily swapped between. The user could choose which to start with. These views would control the visible columns, tabs, toolbars and probably menu items. There could be a global view preference, but each tasklist could have its own view. My suggestions:
- Simple: Totally lite, for the android generation. Mimic many of the current task managers. Listview only, no hierarchy, Task title, due date, priority, reminder., maybe flag and category. Ability to sort by fields, or by manually dragging. Has comments. Reduce menu options to cover the above. Maybe allow for say 4 priorities, indicated by the colour of the task
Example: http://i.imgur.com/JfHM13q.png[^]
- Basic: For the mid-range user. Add the tree view, and the ability to nest tasks. Ability to add any of the other columns and functionality? Or leave off Gantt, Stats, custom fields for instance. Initial view is as for the Introduction.tdl. Not entirely sure of where best to pitch this though... Or maybe MLO like. Not so many columns, but icons instead..
- Expert: The full experience for the real taskers and project managers. All features exposed.
This could also be used for setting up TDL for specific uses (mentioned by _BS_). For instance, I have a set up for notetaking, that mimics many of the hierarchical notetaking apps (e.g. Keynote). Currently I run this is a separate version of TDL, due to the width of the comments affecting all tasklists. Only really need Task tree. Note: It would be useful for the comments width to be tasklist specific.
Notebook view: http://i.imgur.com/8nRTC0F.png[^]
To push this boat out still further, I think it would be useful to allow the user to define their own views. This would enable the user to work with a tasklist in a visually simple way, but then quickly switch to a more complex view for more intensive / detailed work.
Text Formatting
I agree with Alex. Being able to visually distinguish certain types of task by the text format would be useful. For me the following would be useful:
Definable font formatting for Tasks based on Level
Definable fonts based on an attribute value (e.g. Tag - could be complex)
- Definable fonts for attribute columns
- The possibility to display icons instead of text in the attribute columns (this is now partly possible for the user defined icon based attributes. Would be nice to do this for some of the in-built ones, as they are better integrated in the application than the user defined ones.
Some things for 'ease of use' – but these are features as much as UI / Workflow enhancement:
Grouping of tasks in Listview
I still think it is a major thing, to be able to group tasks by one or more attributes in Listview.
User defined sorts and groups
We have user defined filtering, and that is great. Would be useful to be able to do this for (multi) Sorting. And if implemented, grouping.
Separate Filtering and Sorting for different Tabs
I still think it would be able to be able to de-couple the filtering for the different tabs (perhaps by preference).
Rules builder
Being able to set up rules that change attributes, based on what happens to other attributes could be nice for efficency. Would be useful for integrating user defined attributes into the application better. But this has been discussed before.
Finally, I would also counsel caution in making changes, and to be clear why you want to. Is the point having a task list that is everything to everyone?
zajchap
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A big thank you for the application, it is very useful to me
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I am using 6.7.8 and have encountered problems when printing. Many if not all of the stylesheets do not print all of my tasks and I cannot detect a pattern. The samee thing happens when printing without stylesheets. I have enabled all tasks, uncompleted tasks, visible columns and including comments.
Reasoning that some of the trouble might come from older versions of the stylesheets, I extracted the updated versions from Beta 4. Several of these are now working correctly. Specifically, ToDoListTableStylesheet_v1.xsl, and Z_DetailedReport.xsl seem to work. If I try with no stylesheets, then once again, only some of my tasks will print.
Am I missing some setting?
Thank you.
Jon
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Member 10052396 wrote: I have enabled all tasks, uncompleted tasks, visible columns ...
Do I understand you right that you are missing some uncompleted tasks? (because you have not selected completed tasks).
What happens if you don't include comments?
Pierre
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Pierre de la Verre wrote: Do I understand you right that you are missing some uncompleted tasks?
You understand correctly.
Pierre de la Verre wrote: What happens if you don't include comments?
You win the prize! All expected tasks print when I uncheck comments. Why?
Jon
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Member 10052396 wrote: ...print when I uncheck comments. Why?
I suppose this is based on the changings of the (@)COMMENTS value in TDL. There were some discussions around it here in the forum. I think that Dan will see your reply and look into it.
Pierre
modified 23-Nov-13 3:38am.
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Pierre de la Verre wrote: based on the changings of the (@)COMMENTS value in TDL But Jon's saying that tasks are missing when he doesn't use a stylesheet
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Member 10052396 wrote: You win the prize! All expected tasks print when I uncheck comments. Why? How big are the comments?
Are they plain-text or rich-text?
ps. Have you tried 6.8.B4?
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.dan.g. wrote: How big are the comments?
They vary from a couple of lines to a page or so.
.dan.g. wrote: Are they plain-text or rich-text?
Rich text. I have embedded files in some of the comments.
.dan.g. wrote: ps. Have you tried 6.8.B4?
No, but if you think it will make a difference, I will. I noticed in the earlier betas and alphas that I could not store my preferences in the ini. It is important to me. Can I now do this?
Thank you both for your help.
Jon
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Member 10052396 wrote: If I try with no stylesheets, then once again, only some of my tasks will print. So with no stylesheet, tasks are missing?
If so, can you describe exactly what options you are using in the 'Print' dialog and, if possible, describe the nature of the tasks that are missing (so that we might determine a pattern)?
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.dan.g. wrote: So with no stylesheet, tasks are missing?
Correct.
From my original post, "I have enabled all tasks, uncompleted tasks, visible columns and including comments."
I thought the pattern was that the printed tasks were all overdue. I changed one overdue task to current and made a non overdue task, overdue. Did not help. The same tasks were printed.
Jon
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I must admit that I've never heard of this before.
Can you send me a portion of your tasklist that exhibits this problem, along with your preferences file?
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Sure. It is the weekend here and the file is at work. I'll send it Monday (or sooner if something comes up).
Jon
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Hi All
I did a routine Google search for recent comments on TDL and came up with this one from 2012:
"As for gripes my only one is that it's ugly."
And that confuses me because I don't know what the user means in this context.
Do they mean:
1) It uses the default Windows theme instead of groovy .NET components?
2) It is plain in it's styling?
3) It doesn't allow 'in-place' editing?
4) Its UI is otherwise badly designed?
5) ...
Tell me how else you might interpret their comments?
ps. I'm not looking for validation or assurance about TDL.
pps. Please send me links to software that you think is 'beautiful', but not web pages.
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Thx Dave.
DT996 wrote: has a pretty face, but it 's functionality falls way short of TDL. This is a big part of the problem.
It's (relatively) easy to make something simple look beautiful, much harder with more complex software... (Visual Studio, SQL Server, etc)
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.dan.g. wrote: 2) It is plain in it's styling? yes
.dan.g. wrote: 4) Its UI is otherwise badly designed? for most of users I introduced TDL to, yes, it is. They just don't care too much about functionality (at least in the beginning), it looks confusing to them, they don't stay with the app for long so there's no chance for them to become advance users and they rarely come back.
Another issue is a learning curve, some extensive actions to reach a goal (remember, http://www.codeproject.com/Messages/4680904/Task-focus.aspx[^], your solution was Quote: What about combining: Filter Bar > Show > Selected Tasks
with Filter Bar > Options > Show all subtasks ? Still it's a good solution and you are getting the required result but not everybody would be so insistent to come over it even if there's already some experience with the app.
We mentioned MLO several times, it's a shareware so they have to do something to sell it good. Have a look at its evolution within last, say, 7-8 years.
1. http://www.procrastinationhelp.com/mlo1.jpg[^]
http://www.procrastinationhelp.com/mlo2.jpg[^]
Overwhelmed with settings
2. http://bruceatkinson.com/images/mlo-ssh001.gif[^]
a bit more polished
3. http://www.mylifeorganized.net/i/sshots/myLife-ssh014.png[^]
latest version, unbalanced in colors to me but we are talking about GUI progress.
Apart from it, Omnifocus looks nice http://www.omnigroup.com/video/#introducing_omnifocus_for_mac[^]
In the beginning users want something eye-candy, then they want functionality and in the end they insist on customization.
In my view for most users TDL has the latter twos but lacks the first one, as soon as it gets it http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ryrQ8nadah8[^]
Unfortunately I cannot help with the design itself, probably it can be somehow outsourced but if you ask what exactly can be helpful:
1. ability to choose between simple, moderate and advanced layouts during installation.
Probably it's even better to have some advice for users which layout to choose depending on their previous experience and workflow requirements (a housemaid doesn't need Gantt charting and Burndown statistics so a simple layout is a good choice for her, likewise a project manager wouldn't be embarrassed by these terms and will choose an advanced layout)
2. more themes to choose from
3. more curved edges of GUI windows
4. icon sets (or different icons)
5. more visual effects
P.S. mostly the abovementioned are feedbacks from users in my surrounding, they are not keyboard ninjas or masters of planning, just normal users
Alex
modified 21-Nov-13 4:52am.
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Re: MLO, other comments.
I have come back here (TDL) [again] after having not kept with it, as the poster above mentions. Again the only real competition is MLO - even then it's not much competition, given the cost ...
What I have been searching for for quite some time, and still not found, is a PIM with subtasks, post-Palm world.The world has moved on in a number of ways since Palm, not the least Google, Android, and Linux. i.e. Agendus + ShadowPlan/Bonsai in a larger cross-platform Linux / Windows / Google / Android / Internet world. And none of this website subscription / synchronization nonsense, direct sync only. (But I appreciate that the subscription route is probably the only way to keep food in your mouth in this ecosystem.)
I am back to TDL mostly for two things - Android app, and finally got Wine going and found I could run TDL under it. TDL as a windows only app, still, is harming itself. Which is all to say, it's not TDL, it's the ecosystem surrounding it - pbworks and codeproject are easy examples of this. Everything screams 'coders only'. The lack of (Google) calendar integration also holds it back.
(Given my recent experience, had to play with Windows 8.1 for the first time, I've vowed never to buy another MS machine, and to get off all things MS ASAP. Like I said, TDL windows only holds it back.)
Anywho ... the reason / what caused me to write this ... careful if you take up the offer to check out MLO - the free version is still many, many, years old, and also 'plainly ugly'. If you want to see the esthetics of what the above poster is talking about, stick with the screenshots the website shows. Or purchase.
In the mean time ... in many ways I appreciate the 'ugliness' of TDL - it's CLEAN! Straightforward. Easy to use / understand - once you understand outlines, and project management, little extraneous. But, if all that were intuitive to most people ... there'd be more competition for it out there - and there isn't.
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