From kde-pim Sat Nov 29 18:25:52 2008 From: "Janne Ojaniemi" Date: Sat, 29 Nov 2008 18:25:52 +0000 To: kde-pim Subject: Re: [Kde-pim] A new class of "Personal Information Manager" Message-Id: <898b68d10811291025q105a781dq6510d1a50df629d5 () mail ! gmail ! com> X-MARC-Message: https://marc.info/?l=kde-pim&m=122798319420204 > > Well, like you mentioned Basket would have been the closest to what > you want. I would suggest that you make a detailed list of > _specific_features_ that you would like to see added to Basket and we > can help develop those ideas into informative bug reports to request > those features. If you are of the opinion that a new application is > needed, then I suppose that a bug against kdelibs would be the closest > that we would get but it would probably be a long time (1/x as x->0) > until a dev picks up the project. Basket does some of the things I would like to see. If you want specifics what I'm looking for.... Well, I haven't thought of the details that much, but I'm thinking of two different approaches, one being "email-like", one being something different. The email-like would be like this: On the outside, the app could look like an email-app. That is, there is a sidebar that has "folders" (actually, tags) that contain all the entries. At the top would be "all entries" that contain (you guessed it), all entries, in chronological format. The other entries in the sidebar would be the various tags that are being used. The user could also rate entries, so there would be a "Top Rated"-category in there. There would also be a timeline, something similar to what F-spot has (see here: http://lwn.net/images/ns/grumpy/im/f-spot.png). This would give the user a tool to get a quick idea when he has posted entries, and he could quickly jump to certain timeperiods. To follow the "email-layout", there would be a list of messages that match the selected tag, and from there the user could select individual articles. To add an article... If the user hits any key, it opens a compose-window (alternatively, there could be no "sub-windows", but the composing of new articles could happen in the mainwindows itsef. It would keep things simple, since there would not be multitude of windows floating around). This means that dataentry is very fast, since user does not have to hit any specific button (or a convulted button-combo) to create an entry. When the yser starts to type on the keyboard, he start to write an article. Of course the app would have shortcuts, but those need a meta-key in any case. Of course, everything would be perfecty searchable. All in all, very familiar to email. But unlike in email, the user could jump from article to article. When user reads an article, there would be a "related articles"-field that the user could use to jump to other related articles. And of course the article itself could contain links to tags or individual articles. Articles could also contain images and other media as well. User could also add emails from Kmail to the journal. What about the "other" UI? Well.... It would retain the timeline, but it would look different from the abovementioned suggestion. It would look more like a wiki. There would be a start-page (like Wikipedia has) that would display information about current articles and anniversaries ("on this day...."). There would be links to tags, so user could view articles that have certain tags. This approach is harder to describe, since it's more free-form. But Wikipedia could give you a rough idea :). But the start-page would offer more direct way to access individual articles that what Wikipedia does, since Wikipedia relies more on searching. Adding new articles would be very straightforward still, ideally user could just start typing. The main difference between the two is that the first is more structured, whereas the latter is more free-form (and harder to describe). I think an app of this sort offers two huge benefits: a) it lets you write down things that are important to you. Depending on how you use it, it could become a knowledge-base, a straight journal/diary, tool or collecting data or all of those in the same time. It really depends on the user. I would like to see the app be flexible and "open ended", that is, it could be used in different ways. b) Since the data and entries would be interlinked, the value of the data is greater that the value of each individual piece of data added together. And this is magnified by the fact that the data would be interlinked to/from other apps as well. Knowing that "John Smith's address is xxxxxxxx" is valuable. But also knowing that he's married to Susan, worked for companies yyyyyy and zzzzzz and that while he was in zzzzzz he was responsible for product A, the value of the data goes up. Each of those datapieces is valuable. But if we combine it all, it becomes greater than the sum of it's parts. You know, as I typed that, I was reminded of an app I ran in to just yesterday (this is related somewhat to my "personal assistant"-discussion, since same company makes both products): http://www.stikkit.com/. Stikkit is basically notepad. But when you add data to it, the data gets more detailed and interlinked. It's a smart system that can pick uf data about certain item from several pieces of text. So if you write in note A that "John Smith's address is xxxxx", and then you write in note B that "John Smiths phonenumber is YYYYYY", the system knows that it should combine that data. The system also notifies you of other things you have written about "John Smith", like upcoming meetings and the like. Of course this data could be fed to/from Address Book and Korganizer as well. I hope that I have given at least some more tangible examples of what I'm looking for :). _______________________________________________ KDE PIM mailing list kde-pim@kde.org https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/kde-pim KDE PIM home page at http://pim.kde.org/