[Kde-pim] Proposal for a new pim application

[Laura Dragan]

On Wed, Oct 21, 2009 at 10:52 PM, Christian Mollekopf
<chrigi_1 at fastmail.fm> wrote:
> I had a look at the kde4 port of basket this evening, and now while trying to
> sleep i suddenly understood what the key point is in the application i
> imagine.
>
> The mail is rather lengthy, so feel free to skip it if you are not interested
> in this project.
>
> I have to say something about my habits in advance:
>
> First:
> I'm not really good at organizing my stuff.
> I usually make a huge mess, and at some point i just have to clean up this
> mess. And then everything is sorted properly until i make a huge mess again.
>
> So it looks exactly the same in my filesystem. I usually clutter up my
> homefolder, with stuff i don't know where to put, until i start to make new
> folders for the stuff which belongs together, and for the rest i make some
> "temp", "downloads", "howtos" and throw everything in there.
>
> Second:
> I'm really bad at remembering stuff. I can forget things within seconds.
> And the only thing which helped so far, is writing down as i think of it,
> otherwise it's gone again. And if i have something to do at the moment, i can
> be sure i won't remember in 5 minutes (but maybe in 5hours when it's too late)
>
> Third:
> I'm lazy.
> If i have to figure out where i want to store some info first, and maybe even
> start a text processor, i will never write anything down.
> And maybe i write it down but store it somewhere where i will never find it
> again
>

You described most of the users I know .. whether they want to admit
it or not :)

> The app which i have in mind should basically help me on these problems.
>
> The key point is, that at the time i want to store the information I don't
> care where it's stored. I just want to store.
> Later when i wan't to access the data, then i care about where it is stored,
> but only because i have to know this to access the data.
> This is basically the problem of a container (folder/basket/book) based
> structure (filesystem, basket, kjots), and this is also why basket and kjots
> don't really help me as they are.
>
> To overcome this problem, i want to store the data in just ONE container,
> basically a huge growing database, of all notes i ever make.

This is how semnotes displays notes - as a list organized by last
modification date (can be changed to creation date or sorted by title
..)
They are stored in the Nepomuk repository. This is done mainly because
of convenience - all the things that the notes link to are there, so
it's easy. Also, as I see notes, they are normaly short pieces of text
without much formatting used just to write something down quickly and
not write volumes .. therefore the size of the nepomuk store should
not be gravely affected.

> I believe it should be possible to still find the correct data trough
> searching (keywords, date, associated notes).
> Anyway i have to know what i am looking for (everything kde related, all
> todo's which are not completed), so it should always be possible to find the
> right keywords.

Most of the important things are or will be someday in nepomuk
(hopefully ;) ) - this includes todos, events, artists extracted from
the music files, projects, friends. Linking the notes to these things
is done automatically by semnotes - it has some bugs but we're working
on them. However, for the basic things it works nicely .. I plan to
integrate soon the code by Sebastian Trueg that links places from
geonames.
Also the notes can be tagged - sharing the tags from dolphin, gwenview, etc.

Searching teh notes for what you want becomes much easier with all the
relations created - search by title, date, tags, content, referenced
thing
e.g. the notes that mention Brian and Ireland and are tagged with
todo, written in january.

>
> And this is also where nepomuk comes in action.
> I think with nepomuk, which is fed by text parsers and metadata and manual
> tags, it is possible to achieve this, to find the correct data.

You are right. And nepomuk can do much more.

>
> Because we integrate with nepomuk, searching for kde related stuff will at the
> same time also show me mails which relate to the same topic, and files on my
> harddisk, and blockpost from akregator, .....
> After all, if i'm searching for info this is what i want to have. As much info
> as possible about a certain topic.
>
> Because inserting information needs a minimum of effort, i will also insert
> more data, which will in turn make the database more useful.
>
> Of course i want to be able to create todos from this data, but this is
> actually rather a convenience function. Anyway korganizer is responsible for
> managing my tasks and time (and this app should in no way interfere with
> this).

This was a feature that was requested for semnotes by Sebastian Trueg
and I am seriously considering it.
The way I would like to have it is like adding tags in Eclipse (if you
are familiar with it) - adding on a new line something like this:

todo get milk

and it should be extracted from the note and put in nepomuk as its own
thing of type task, while remaining connected to the note that first
mentioned it. Since most of the communication between akonadi and
nepomuk is working, i suppose it will get automagically moved then to
akonadi and seen in the tools that are specialized in task management.

>
> But if i search for some topic, i also want to see the todos i already have
> for this topic. This is why it is important, that also the korganizer todo's
> show up in this app (through akonadi).
>
> An important point is definitely also the speed of input, sometimes i need to
> write something down within seconds (during a talk or so, like when you make a
> quick note in a real notepad).
> Therefore i need a slick interface, which concentrates on input.
> Maybe even trough a krunner command which takes a oneliner note.

if you implement this, I will definitely "borrow" the code because
it's something I really would like in my app :)

>
> Important is that it is later possible to find this line again.
>
>
>
> So, after this rather lengthy explanation, i hope i could make myself a bit
> clearer.
> Let me make clear, that i'm still interested on working together with the
> basket, or kjots people. We just need to make clear if we share some common
> thoughts or not (still we can share code also otherwise)

and semnotes?


Laura

>
> So I'll go back to sleep now =)
>
> Cheers,
>
> Chris
>
>
> On Wednesday 21 October 2009 15:57:12 Christian Mollekopf wrote:
>> On Wednesday 21 October 2009 15:39:26 you wrote:
>> > On Wednesday 21 October 2009 14:35:25 Christian Mollekopf wrote:
>> > > So basically the app i have in mind would be a rewrite of basket, with
>> > >  kjots and semnotes merged, and usage of the rest of the pim tools
>> > > where needed.
>> >
>> > Sorry to home in on this and pick on you but I'd beg you to at least take
>> > a good, hard look at the Basket sourcecode before committing to
>> > rewriting. It's probably only worth a rewrite if there is almost no code
>> > worth salvaging at all.
>>
>> Agreed, i'm not committed yet to anything. Thanks to sune i found the git
>> repository of basket, and will take a closer look.
>>
>> Nevertheless i think i does not make sense to have both basket and kjots,
>> since they serve a very similar purpose (and with the right interface it
>> should be possible to merge those projects, and server both of them).
>> So I'm also no committed to work on basket only.
>>
>> I think we should see what every project wants to achieve and how we can
>>  unify our efforts.
>>
>> Cheers
>> _______________________________________________
>> KDE PIM mailing list kde-pim at kde.org
>> https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/kde-pim
>> KDE PIM home page at http://pim.kde.org/
>>
> _______________________________________________
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> https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/kde-pim
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>
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