[Kde-pim] Proposal for a new pim application

[Stephen Kelly]

Christian Mollekopf wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> After some thinking and reading half of "Getting things done" (over which
> i stumbled during my research), i would like to outline again the features
> of the program i plan to write, and ask for some information.
> If you are not interested in the program feel free to skip directly to the
> "Implementation" part to answer my questions, or skip the mail completely
> ;-)
> 
> Aims:
> -make it easy to create notes but process them later (so you don't have to
> think ATM. where something belongs, but can do it sometime later when you
> have time)

Did you see my recent screencast about notes on the desktop? I didn't demo 
it, but you can also create a new note on the desktop and it goes into an 
"unsorted" collection of notes which can be organized later.

> -make it easy to associate notes,todos,?. with related data  (mail, files
> on filesystem, other todos, ?..)
> 
> So it should be a container to store random data, and an interface to
> organize this data later on (supported by automatic association)

My hope is that we can make use of nepomuk for these kinds of relational 
features, and possibly relate notes, todos and other "things" with projects 
or tasks which would by extension relate them together in a hopefully useful 
way.

I think transforming a note into a TODO would be a good feature to have, or 
even creating a new separate todo from an existing note.

> 
> Functionality:
> -a quick interface to create new notes, todos, ?.

In progress?

> -automatic association of related data
> -manual association of related data (tagging..)

This kind of functionality is what Laura Dragan (with semnotes) and others 
in Nepomuk are working on I believe. Semantic analysis of text is difficult, 
and instead of tagging (which associates things/notes with strings which 
have no semantic meaning) I think we should work on associating notes with 
things which can be understood by nepmouk. For example, associate a note 
with a "Project". A "Project" has a deadline three days from now, other 
todos, people working on it (who I can email/phone) etc. 

Or associate a note of something I want to discuss with someone with the 
"Person" object that Nepomuk knows about. That would give easy access to 
emails I recently wrote to them, blogs they wrote and "this person is 
pinging me on IRC" notifications.

Associating notes with static strings which have no further meaning wouldn't 
easily bring these features

> -a user defined set of views on nepomuk queries( which represent i.e. task
> lists), which should allow to have i.e. todo lists which are automatically
> updated as new information is available.

This is something that should be possible with virtual collections in 
Akonadi. The idea, though not fully realized yet, is that a virtual 
collection in Akonadi would represent the result of a nepomuk query, and 
that result set can be shown in an application and interacted with. Akonadi 
then manages the linking of items which newly match the query, and unlinking 
of items which no longer match the query.

> 
> This should allow to work according to the GettingThingsDone methods, but
> does not enforce it in any way. I just like to work like this, but the
> program should not be a dedicated GTD app.
> 
> Key is of course that it works well together with all other PIM
> applications, since i am not interested to reimplement any of this
> functionality.

Indeed.

Kevin Ervin has been working on a GTD type app I think called zanshin. I'm 
not sure where it is though. Probably svn playground or some random git 
repo.

> 
> Now i figured, that i have to start coding with my own application first
> to fully understand what is needed, so i can also really help to create
> code which can be used by other similar projects (or simply join the
> efforts of other projects).
> I still want to collaborate as much as possible with similar projects
> (SemNotes, KJots, Basket, ?.), at least for library parts, but most of
> these programs have different aims, at least for the UI (except maybe
> semnotes)

Yes, I think there are still some difficult pieces left to get libraries 
which the multitude of note taking and "kind of short kind of temporary kind 
of random text" apps we have can all use.

> 
> Implementation:
> -all data retrieval should go via nepomuk (while all akonadi data is fed
> into nepomuk)
> -new pim data (notes, todos,?) should be created directly in akonadi (and
> find its way back to the visualization via nepomuk)

I would like to know more about data retrieval with nepomuk, but that is the 
kind of thing that akonadi is specifically for. I guess feeding data from 
akonadi into nepomuk would work if we had a resource to do it, but right now 
I'm not convinced it is the way to go. That could be just my ignorance 
shining through though. I agree that new notes/todos should be created 
through Akonadi apis.

> 
> So here are my questions for you:
> -Is the above outlined implementation the right way to go?
> -Is the bridge between akonadi and nepomuk already working?

I believe akonadi can create nepomuk query and put the result in a virtual 
collection, but it is a while since I looked at it. I think that would be a 
good starting point for you actually. The last I heard it was putting the 
nepomuk query into the remoteId of the akonadi collection, which should work 
for your use, but I think it should be separated into an attribute of the 
collection.

> 
> I will go on with the techbase tutorials which are existing on nepomuk and
> akonadi, if you have any other resources of information I'm glad for any
> hint.

The akonadi and nepomuk apidocs should also have useful information. Akonadi 
developers are available on #akonadi on IRC. My nick is steveire there.

You might also find this interesting if you didn't see it:

http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.kde.devel.pim/26057

Another thread I should follow up on...

All the best,

Steve.

> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Chris
> 
> _______________________________________________
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> https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/kde-pim
> KDE PIM home page at http://pim.kde.org/



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