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List:       kde-usability
Subject:    Re: KCron prototype
From:       Simon Edwards <simon () simonzone ! com>
Date:       2002-03-14 18:10:15
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Hi,

On Tuesday 12 March 2002 23:39, Eric E wrote:
> On Tuesday 12 March 2002 11:13 am, Simon Edwards wrote:
> > and "Periodically". :) With periodically being 90% of the time one
> > of:
> > - Once a month at a certain time.
> > - Given days of the week at a certain time. (weekdays for example).
> > - Once a week at a certain time.
> > - Once a day at a certain time.
> > - Once an hour at a certain time.
> > - Every x minutes.
>
> This seems sensible.  I will replace those text boxes with radio buttons
> for the above options.  Any more suggestions for intervals like the above?

It was a quick list, but it seems fine.

> > Perhaps you should first try designing KCron with these simplier
> > requirements, and then worry about the super mega advanced method that
> > exposes all of the cron time specification functionality...
>
> Another good point.  I guess for the mega advanced cron functionality, a
> clear writeup of the cron documentation, WITH EXAMPLES is more useful than
> some contorted wizard.  

I was just thinking that for the advanced part you might want to bust out 
each (time) field in the crontab entry into a separate text box:

Month:        [______________]
Day of Month: [______________]
Day of Week:  [______________]
Hour:         [______________]
Minute:       [______________]

such that the user can enter patterns/ranges/numbers etc for crontab. Making 
sure to valid the input as much as possible.  Call the whole the whole 
advanced input thingy a "Time Pattern" or something too. Now, that's not much 
of an improvement over hacking your crontab with a text editor. So on the 
right side of the window put a preview area that just displays the times that 
the user's time pattern matches. Also add a date/time selector of some kind 
to to change the time range the previewshows. Then people can check that 
thier pattern does what they expect. For example. If I had "0-23/2" in the 
hours field and the rest blank, the preview should show:

Thu 14 March 2002 18:00
Thu 14 March 2002 20:00
Thu 14 March 2002 22:00
Fri 15 March 2002 00:00
Fri 15 March 2002 02:00
Fri 15 March 2002 04:00
etc.

I hope you get the idea.

> This place ought to link you easily to
> documentation on how to write crontab entries, and examples.

A little bit of quick docs would be handy too... maybe on the same window 
somewhere.

cheers,

-- 
Simon Edwards             | Guarddog Firewall
simon@simonzone.com       | http://www.simonzone.com/software/
Nijmegen, The Netherlands | "ZooTV? You made the right choice."
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