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List:       kdepim-users
Subject:    Re: [kdepim-users] Journal Usability Cleanup
From:       Mihnea Capraru <mihnea_capraru () fastmail ! fm>
Date:       2006-10-02 19:08:21
Message-ID: 200610021908.21352.mihnea_capraru () fastmail ! fm
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On Monday 02 October 2006 04:02, Jean-Philippe Monteiro wrote:
> Hi Community.
>
> This is not a formal reply, it's more like new topics for this
> conversation:
>
> Journal may be seen as of different use for different people.

Right. However it's not right to try to satisfy _all_ the possible uses, 
because that way you end up with a monster.

> The Journal is for me a very basic Activities' List.
> I use the title bar in the hope there is somewhere/sometimes a search tool
> for it: If I work on Avian Flu, I try to start all titles by "AvI"  (and
> ToDo's and Meetings) & would love to be able, at times of final reporting
> for instance, to get all "AvI" entries in the journal to be displayed -AvI
> Meetings, AvI Programs Proposals, AvI training whatever - Helping me by
> this way summarise everything that happend over a specific issue.
>
> I am not aware of any way to do this in Kontact / Korganizer 3.4, but I may
> be dumb. There is no entry for Journal both in User's Manual & Online Docs.

What you're doing with the title would probably be achieved much better by the 
use of tags, since you are literally tagging activities with the journal 
titles. On the other hand the title should probably stay and have a default - 
see https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=134956 for a (mere) suggestion.

> One thing I am totally unaware of, is how to "connect" events to the
> Journal, so that ToDos, Calendar Events, Number of mails sent/receivesd,
> Notes created do receive/create their own entry in the journal.
>
> But I may be dumb, and unfortunately rely on a pre-historic version of KDE
> (3.4) alongside Cavern-Age Suse 9.3... :) No, I do not intend to change my
> reliable system for now.

With KDE 3.5 there is a setting to 'Record completed to-dos in journal 
entries', you can find it under 'Configure calendar...' -> 'Views'. I'm not 
aware of other integration features, and this setting itself has some (major) 
usability defects:

https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=132676
https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=132677
https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=113749,

which is why I've turned it off.

> FootNote: it seems Journal is somehow connected to libkcal, which does not
> appear in my YaST. Should I be concerned ?

No. Journal entries are recorded in your calendar, together with TODOs, 
appointments etc. All of these are handled by korganizer, and libkcal is in 
kdepim (i think), so yast probably has nothing to say except that korganizer 
depends on kdepimlibs (or whatever the packages are called). Nothing can 
break.

> Original conversation, with some replies:

[...]

> > > Please simply record the date and time when the entry was written, and
> > > remove the date/time inputs from the GUI.
> >
> > But what if I want forgot to write yesterday's journal and this morning I
> > decide to write it? Isn't it Ok the way it is with the default date
> > setting?
>
> Agree, one should be able to choose the date of entry but: you can add an
> entry to any date by selecting it on the Calendar Pane by the way >> no
> need for Date field in the Journal Entry.

OMG why didn't I think of this? ;-) On the other hand I tend to understand 
that the day of the journal is the date when it was written, not the date it 
is about. So perhaps drop even the ability to assign journal to dates 
manually no matter how, and just record when they were written. This way it 
becomes more obvious how to add a journal entry, since you only have one big 
button.

But this is just a wild speculation, it might be an over-simplification to do 
this. I think you're right, namely "add an entry to any date by selecting it 
on the Calendar Pane by the way >> no need for Date field in the Journal 
Entry"

> > > Second comes the Attendees tab (and thereby the whole tabbar, since it
> > > only contains two tabs altogether). What does it mean in this context?
> > > It's cetainly useful to keep track of attendees while planning for
> > > certain events within KOrganizer, but planning for events is one
> > > context and writing a journal entry is a completely different context.
> > > One is about the future, the other about the past, one has to do with
> > > distribution lists while the other one is normally private etc.
> > >
> > > Please remove the Attendees tab from the journal entry dialog, if there
> > > really is no  non-abusive use for it.
> >
> > You have a good point here.  I can't think of a good reason for Journal
> > attendees. Anyone??
>
> I believe that for people with a functional outlook-like Meeting
> Requests/Approval automation, Online Calendar & all the stuff, it could be
> usefull to have all attendees automatically displayed in your journal entry
> for this event. Now, who's using this feature ?

There are three problems here:

1. This sounds so strange that it probably belongs in a plugin
2. _Displaying_ attendees automatically does not imply the need for the 
ability to _enter_ them manually when writing a journal entry.
3. The simple fact that one might imagine some users with a need for some 
feature does not mean that the feature should be there, complicating both 
software internals and software use.

[...]

> If soimeone pronounces the words "Thread Hijacking", I'll start a new one
> with deepest apologies.

It's OK we're all safe ;-)

> Jean-Philippe.

-- 
Mihnea Capraru
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