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Comments and Discussions
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Hi All,
I've just been playing with some new 'technology' to bind a tree and list together and I'm proposing to use it first for the Gantt Chart plugin and then, if it works well, for the current Tree and List views.
The attached zip contains a demo of a Gantt-like app for you to play with. Currently it's display-only because I've been working on ensuring that the tree and list remained synchronised.
Feel free to feed back to me your impressions and what you would want from a Gantt-view.
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Interesting!
First remarks :
- For parent task bar, it would be better to use another color and different start / end edges.
- Moreover, what about if the start or/and due date is not present ? Like in gantt project export, it should be great to use the current date.
- It would be important to add some extra info in the gantt chart, like title of the task(in the bar or at the top of the bar), allocated to (at the right of the bar)
Have a good end of year 
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laurentbosc wrote: For parent task bar, it would be better to use another color and different start / end edges
Absolutely, the parent task ought to show the full extent of its subtasks.
laurentbosc wrote: Moreover, what about if the start or/and due date is not present ? Like in gantt project export, it should be great to use the current date.
I'me guessing that there would have to be some preferences.
laurentbosc wrote: like title of the task(in the bar or at the top of the bar)
Is it not enough that the task title is always visible at the left?
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"Is it not enough that the task title is always visible at the left?"
I think that it is easier to read a gantt chart with the essential following info:
- dates (ok with the task bar and the top time line)
- title of the task
- allocated to
without any needto "switch" beetween list and gantt.
But it is just my opinion 
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Hi Dan,
Not sure what state the exe is in, but here goes in no particular order...
Will need some visual delineation - e.g. different colours for alternate lines, or a grid.
Horizontal scroll - no scroll on the first 4 columns (in this example - i.e. scroll only affects the gantt.
Zoom in and out - the column titles get hard to read when zooming out.
Would need to be able to change the columns - monthly is useful, but quarterly, weekly would also be useful as a minimum.
Ability to set the date range viewed.
Presumably this will work off filters
Will the columns to the left be definable? e.g. % done, assigned to, etc...? Or will they match the columns shown in the other views? Ideally they would be a smaller sub-set.
Nice to: additional info of the bars - e.g. task colour, % done, task name, assigned to
Nice to: be able to drag the gantt bars to change the dates
Have you thought much about how the parent tasks are to be handled?
Especially for those people who use calculated dates based on the latest start date of the subtasks or earliest due date of the subtasks? Also for those that don't have dates for parent tasks (just for the leaves). The typical Gantt defaults to earliest of the subtasks start dates, and latest of the subtasks due dates. Will the Gantt view therefore have different rules in place for calculating parent dates? Or will it leave the dates empty, if they are empty to begin with? Or will they be visually represented as 'today', if they don't exist? My preferences:
- A preference to calculate parent dates (earliest and latest of subtasks), irrespective of the calculation settings used in the other tabs. (Or does this have to be the only option - what is the alternative?)
- If no dates are defined for a parent task, to visually show the calculated time span, perhaps in light grey, but not to save it back to the task file (i.e. dates remain empty). I use these parent tasks essentially as groups - they are not tasks - and should therefore be visually different. This is something that messes up when working with TDL and GanttPtoject. GP puts the dates in.
- Having said that, it would be useful to be able to select tasks and save their calculated dates as user input dates for the purpose of reporting at a given point in time.
- If dates are defined for a parent task, that date range should be displayed. However, it would be useful to show the difference between the assigned dates and the calculated dates somehow (different coloured parts?)
Have a Happy New Year.
zajchapp
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zajchapp wrote: Will need some visual delineation - e.g. different colours for alternate lines, or a grid.
Agreed.
zajchapp wrote: Horizontal scroll - no scroll on the first 4 columns (in this example - i.e. scroll only affects the gantt.
Agreed.
zajchapp wrote: Zoom in and out - the column titles get hard to read when zooming out. Would need to be able to change the columns - monthly is useful, but quarterly, weekly would also be useful as a minimum.
Perhaps 'Zoom' just switches between [weekly/monthly/yearly] ?.
zajchapp wrote: Ability to set the date range viewed.
Or being able to define the start date, and then calculating the end date automatically ?.
zajchapp wrote: Presumably this will work off filters
Yes.
zajchapp wrote: Will the columns to the left be definable?
Not initially. So feel free to suggest an initial selection.
zajchapp wrote: Nice to: additional info of the bars - e.g. task colour, % done, task name, assigned to
Nice to: be able to drag the gantt bars to change the dates
Later probably.
zajchapp wrote: Have you thought much about how the parent tasks are to be handled?
I am proposing initially to always calculate the parent's date range from its subtasks. This is the typical behaviour in other Gantt applications and would probably meet most users' needs (using the 80/20 rule).
As usual, I propose to release a fairly fixed initial implementation that will evolve over time.
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.dan.g. wrote: Perhaps 'Zoom' just switches between [weekly/monthly/yearly] ?.
Well... it is always by day or by week really. But it is useful to indicate months, quarters, years as well. Have a look at GanttProject - it does this in a typical way.
[Edit: Actually, thinking about how I would use this in TDL, the current 'by month' representation is probably fine.]
.dan.g. wrote: Or being able to define the start date, and then calculating the end date automatically ?.
Calculated based on what?
.dan.g. wrote: So feel free to suggest an initial selection.
The usual is: Task title, start date, end date, assigned to. Additional info is % done, and priority (although these are mostly represented on the Gantt chart itself).
There is a bunch of additional information, such as dependence, duration, completion status, ID etc that could be added, but personally I don't use them.
I see being able to modify dates by dragging the gantt boxes as reasonably important.
.dan.g. wrote: I am proposing initially to always calculate the parent's date range from its subtasks.
Fair enough - though will this calculation only appear on this tab? As I say, most of my parent tasks have no dates, as they effectively operate as headings/labels.
Do you have any thoughts on printing? This seems to be a weakness of a lot of Gantt software (the free ones anyway).
One other thing I thought of: I see this functionality as a visual way of getting an overview of tasks/projects and their relative timings. Being able to easily edit from here is useful too. This would be very useful, as it means you wouldn't need to export to say GanttProject, then re-import.
However, I don't see much value in implementing advanced Gantt tasks / Project planning - Resource planning or resource loading for instance, or critical path evaluation. Leave that to the dedicated planning software IMHO. But then again, things will evolve as they will...
zajchapp
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zajchapp wrote: Calculated based on what?
Based on the data itself. The idea is to calculate the earliest start date and latest due/completed date of all the (filtered) data and use that as the display range.
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.dan.g. wrote: Based on the data itself. The idea is to calculate the earliest start date and latest due/completed date of all the (filtered) data and use that as the display range.
I see. That could work. In that case I would also ask you to consider scrolling the gantt to 'Today' - or perhaps a month prior - when going to the tab. Or have a 'Go to Today' button.
There may still be a case for limiting (or extending) the date range presented vs the dates covered by the tasks. On screen this could be handled largely by zooming and scrolling. Would be useful when printing though...
zajchapp
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zajchapp wrote: consider scrolling the gantt to 'Today'
Agreed.
zajchapp wrote: There may still be a case for limiting (or extending) the date range presented vs the dates covered by the tasks.
Indeed.
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Looks fine.
And also display the dates in the current PC-settings (I see German dates ..)
What is the basic idea when integrating this feature in TDL for the "filter and sorting and displaying and ..." jobs?
Will it ...
a) be part of TDL (like now) and Gantt displays the pre-processed data or
b) will TDL send the entire info to Gantt and there will be filter-features ...?
Happy new year to all! 
Pierre
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Pierre de la Verre wrote: be part of TDL (like now) and Gantt displays the pre-processed data
This, although this may make the calculation of the parent task range more difficult if some subtasks are not present. Or maybe not... 
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pludikhu wrote: But do 80% always have a Start and End/Due date & time?
With the demo I'm working entirely with dummy data. When I release the first 'Dev' build of TDL with the Gantt view we'll then be able to study the various date combinations that arise and figure out the best way to solve them.
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A hierarchical task manager with native XML support for custom reporting.
| Type | Article |
| Licence | Eclipse |
| First Posted | 3 Nov 2003 |
| Views | 12,585,802 |
| Downloads | 224,837 |
| Bookmarked | 2,918 times |
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