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Hi,
I have troubles with the time tracking functionality, which didn't work from the first version where it was introduced. I have a english windows xp but german regional settings, I tried with some different settings here, but couldn't get the time tracking to work.
But this functionality would be very useful for me.
Thanks in advance
TheLazyCat
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what happens when you select an item and then click the clock button beside the 'time spent' field?
does the button go down and stay down?
does a red clock icon appear in the time track column (enable this this in the preferences)?
note: the time tracking does not rely on any regional settings but i'll check nonetheless this evening at home.
rgds
.dan.g.
AbstractSpoon Software
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Hi,
the button goes down and stays down. also the red clock appears in the time track column. everything seems to work fine, except the fact, the the time is not counted, there is always a "0" in the timetrack field.
rgds
TheLazyCat
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the task being tracked gets updated once every 10secs which is just long enough to appear not to be working.
ps. the reason that i'm not getting too alarmed just yet is that many other people use the time tracking and i know they would be screaming if there was a widespread problem.
fear not though we'll figure it out.
.dan.g.
AbstractSpoon Software
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hi,
i have to apologize. When I tried the time tracking some versions ago, it really didn't work. I pressed the button, and 10minutes later, there was still a "0" in the field. So I didn't use it.
With the latest version, I thought I will try it again, if it still doesn't work. But I was to fast in complaining .
So - everything is OK, and the time tracking is working. Sorry!!
Regards
TheLazyCat
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I much prefer the multiple selection scheme in 3.10, thanks dan. But...
If you copy a multiple selection to the clipboard (using Copy this task as text) and paste to Notepad, you just get one task. (If you just do CTRL+C, nothing goes to the clipboard, which is a shame). I'm using 3.10 RC3.
This reminds me of some wishes I have had for some time. Rather than just wish, I thought I'd let you know, so here they are:
1. Copy a selection of tasks and paste them into Notepad or Excel as a series of separate lines (consisting of the task titles only).
2. Do the reverse - copy the titles from Notepad or Excel and paste as separate tasks into TDL.
Unrelated to the above:
3. If escape pressed while being prompted for the title of a new task, delete the task.
4. When deleting a single task with no children, the default reply to the 'Are you sure?' prompt should be Yes, otherwise No (instead of always No).
Cheers,
Colin
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>> If you copy a multiple selection to the clipboard (using Copy this task as text)
i suspect that i just forgot to add multiple selection support to this functionality
>> If you just do CTRL+C, nothing goes to the clipboard, which is a shame).
this was a design decision because i didn't anticipate your request, which is none the less a good one.
now i'll deal with your suggestions:
1. presumably these would have no indenting, just task titles on separate lines?
2. this would have to be done via a specific option ie "Paste Clipboard Text as New Tasks" because TDL's internal clipboard (which holds xml items) is independent of the Windows global clipboard.
3. this might be tricky because i don't currently differentiate between 'just created' tasks and other tasks, but i'll look into it.
4. i'll implement this for the current release.
rgds
.dan.g.
AbstractSpoon Software
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.dan.g. wrote:
1. presumably these would have no indenting, just task titles on separate lines?
Well, it would be great to have indenting too - I think it would be easier to remove unwanted indenting after pasting than to recreate it. But it could get a bit complicated, for example the first task in the selection might be more indented than the second. Maybe you could indent only children whose parent is copied. (Or just not bother - better to have the basic feature than nothing!)
2. this would have to be done via a specific option ie "Paste Clipboard Text as New Tasks" because TDL's internal clipboard (which holds xml items) is independent of the Windows global clipboard.
No problem. You could of course take leading tabs as indicating indenting here too.
Fixing point 4 will help a little with point 3 - I often create a task and realise it's in the wrong place when it appears. One less keystroke to remove it is welcome. Explorer leaves a new object lying around when you escape out of creating a new folder or text document etc, so I don't suppose TDL's behaviour can be considered unreasonable.
(Another idea - how about shift+del deleting a single task without prompting at all?)
Colin
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Hello!
Just a couple grammar-type things I've noticed:
In Tools > Preferences > General, the last checkbox in the second column reads "when i close them". Should this be "when I close them"? (Note the capitalization of the word "I".)
In Tools > Preferences > File Actions, the label on the HTML fieldset says "Html". As an acronym, shouldn't this be "HTML"?
In Tools > Preferences > File Actions > Saving, the second to last checkbox in the first column reads "export to html". As noted above, should this be "export to HTML"?
Thanks; ToDoList rocks!
Matthew
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When I load a tasklist, the list is set to sort by priority, which it does. However, it sorts the completed tasks in with the incomplete tasks, forcing me to click the sort button twice in order to get the proper order. So, instead of putting the completed tasks at the bottom, they are just sorted by priority, period.
Two things I notice. I use "Treat tasks whose subtasks are all completed as also being 'completed'". This means I don't actually have a check in the completed checkbox. This seems to be the root of the problem. When the item is checked it is properly placed at the bottom on the initial load-sort. Without explicitly checking it, only relying on all the subtasks to be complete, I have this behavior.
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Found a couple more bugs which are probably related. Create a new task, then split it. The new subtasks created don't have a checkbox. The only way to get the checkbox to show is to either reload the tasklist or to set the completion percentage manually to 100%, which strikes out the task and cause the box to show up and be checked.
The other bug will probably be fixed the same way. Simply move a task "left" or "right" in the hiearchy. The same problem occurs of no checkbox and the same solution of manually changing it to 100% fixes it.
On the positive side, I like the new tools showing up as icons in the toolbar and I like the more Windows-like multiple selection.
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thanks for the extra hints, but i've hit a snag with the original bug: i can't get it to happen on my dev box, although i did see it on my work machine.
could you possibly do me a 'step-by-step' starting with an empty tasklist.
as for the other bugs, they relate to adding support for showing parent tasks like folders (forgot to add this to the release notes) and should be easy to fix.
rgds
.dan.g.
AbstractSpoon Software
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its okay valik, i managed to reproduce the original bug and fix it, the others too, in RC2.
rgds
.dan.g.
AbstractSpoon Software
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* bug fix for initially incorrect sort when 'treated tasks with completed subtasks as completed' preference is enabled (thanks to Valik)
This bug is fixed. Thanks for such quick work on it.
* bug fix for missing checkboxes when using custom checkbox image (thanks to Valik)
This bug may be fixed, however, it doesn't help me. I don't use a custom checkbox image. I'm sorry that I failed to mention it or if what I said made you think that I was (I really just forgot about the feature). So, I still have the same issue as before when splitting/moving a task.
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its funny the number of bugs i've found by misunderstanding someone's bug report. makes me wonder sometimes just how many bugs can easily exist in a non-trivial piece of software.
i'll look at it again tonight, valik, and thanks for the prompt feedback.
ps. do you have the checkboxes in the tree or in their own column?
.dan.g.
AbstractSpoon Software
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Another option I forgot about. "Display completion checkbox next to task's title" is checked, so its in the tree and not in a seperate column.
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All fixed now, .dan.g. Thanks.
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Hi,
sometimes the expansion buttons of my tasks disappear.
This happens when I resort the tasklist with clicking on certain column headers. What actually happens is that the task titles shift a little bit to the left, eventually hiding the expansion buttons partly or sometimes entirely.
I have not been able to find a reproducable schema for this yet, but maybe someone else has seen this before.
-tafkat
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hi tafkat
you may find that this is standard tree control behaviour when there is a horizontal scrollbar. the tree control is attempting to make as much of the item text visible as possible so it scrolls right until the left hand edge of the text is flush with the left border of the window.
to test this theory try the following:
1. find an item with a long title and select it
2. resize TDL until some of the text is clipped on the right
3. sort any column
one possible solution is for TDL to save and restore the horizontal scroll position when doing a sort (although i'm not sure how easy this will be)
.dan.g.
AbstractSpoon Software
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Ahhh, yes that's it.
I didn't even realized the scrollbar - stupid me
.
I think this is a too minor issue to invest too much time in it.
-tafkat
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Part II - the TDL I need.
preface: Sorry if I come off demanding, not grateful, and too long. But that's me when I like a tool. Also, uplease nderstand that the following is a hodgepodge between use case, specification, demand, and dream
Post-scriptum-preface: in the following, when talking about "times", I mean a duration (minutes, hours, weeks,...). Only a "date" means a time point, which is fine for me with resolution of one day.
I'm currently using TDL for planning software implementation details: it is a guideline to break down tasks (house rule: tasks for which are planned more than 4h have to be split up), as a tool to calculate times for milestones and completion times, and a "red alert" button when the schedule is slipping. The latter requires to keep the list up-to-date. TDL by far beats previous tools: Project on simplicity and price, Excel on hierarchy and commenting, and Word on tabulating and automatic calculation.
So here's the setup I need (much of this is possible with TDL, not everything would have to be exactly like this, this is my idea/spec/use case):
(1) Tasks.
Task hierarchy + comments as it is now.
Each task has estimate, time spent, completion checkbox, priority.
I can filter out all tasks below a given priority, which also means they are excluded from all calculations (aggregated times, due dates, etc.)
Order of tasks gives order of execution. If the schedule is slipping, but my release date is fixed, I can filter out uncompleted low priority features (I assign a lower priority only to features that can be kicked from the release, and that's the only real need I have for priorities.)
times can be entered as 2w1d3h20m (wwek/day/hour/minute), and are displayed as such. I can configure how many hours in a day, days in a week, weeks in a year. (I would avoid month as a unit of time, as a variation of 10% is not acceptable)
Parent tasks can not have no individual time associated, but they atomatically aggregate the time of all children (recursively), and are complete if and only if all children are complete. If there is a child task which is not complete, and has a zero estimate, a "+" is appended to the parent's estimate to indicates that the total time may be longer, since estimates are missing. This "+" bubbles up, of course
I have a shortcut that allows me to split up a leaf task into two two sub tasks: Task A is split into A1 and A2, where A retains onl the name, A1 inherits all properties of A (comment, times, dates, etc.), and A2 is a completely new task.
optionals track for each task *when* time has been spent on it (but I see that as a separate tool).
"Completion" date, which works as a fixture for the milestome calculation below. Or, alternatively (thinking about, I prefer it), I can insert "away from project" tasks, which go into date calculations, but not into duration aggregates. This can acocunt for holidays, sickness, and "the server caught fire" days.
(2) Changes
This schedule does change. New entries are set to blue. For a task tree, or the entire list, I can select "accept schedule", which turns all items to black, but new items will be blue again. How to handle changes to existing items?
(3) Milestones
Milestones handle dates and aggregate times, but no time can be allocated to them directly. Currently I could live with "milestones" only on the top level, I have some ideas/uses for nested milestones, too.
Technically, A Milestone is the parent of a task tree that are required to compleate this milestone. Visually, however, I'd like to have them *below* the tasks to complete. I think the "nicest" implementation would be:
mark a parent task as milestone, which enables the "special behavior", and display aggregated times below the milestone (and all sub tasks)
A milestone works differently from tasks. It has the following dates assigned:
- planned start date
- planned completion date
- actual start date
- estimated completion date (calculated)
- actual completion date
Estimated completion date is calculated as follows:
- for completed tasks, the total time used on them is taken into account.
- for incomplete taks, the max of estimate and spent is taken, and multiplied by the "slip rate" of completed tasks of this milestone.
- total time is adjusted by the slip rate of previous, complete milestones
- (slip rate is max(1, sum of time spent / sum of stime accumulated))
- start date is actual start date if given, expected start date otherwise.
Milestones have aggregates: subtotals for the Milestone itself, and total aggregates for all milestones. Numbers: Original Estimate, Estimate for changes, Total estimate adjusted for slip rate, total time spent.
Other things
I have some problems with "unexpected automatic" handling (automatic setting of dates, etc.) Generally, I would make times and dates either (a) entered by user, or (b) calculated automatically without possibility for the user to enter. Only on a few chosen places I would add automatic, but when in doubt, rather leave it empty/unmodified.
(e.g. when clicking the start clock, and the corresponding milestone has no start date set yet, it is set to the current date).
There is a dozen minor things in the current TDL, independent of all this drivel. But maybe this is a third post
Phew. Thank you for reading. It's not that I didn't have anything better to do. I just... don't like cleaning.
we are here to help each other get through this thing, whatever it is Vonnegut jr. boost your code || Fold With Us! || sighist | doxygen
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thanks peter. i've printed it out so that i can read it slowly and understand it fully.
rgds
.dan.g.
AbstractSpoon Software
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thanks again, peter.
whilst i ruminate on the more structural issues, i propose to implement the following simpler items for the forthcoming release:
1. split task (only into 2 subtasks? or 3, 4, 5...?)
2. if time tracking and the start date is undefined, then set to current date
3. change some of the default preferences to be more 'useful' (you're welcome to more precisely define your 'ideal' setup).
4. append '+' or '-' to accumulated values if subtask attributes are undefined (note: '-' would be used if 'earliest due date' was specified but some due dates were missing)
rgds
.dan.g.
AbstractSpoon Software
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