Re: [Pmtool-devel] Bug/Feature List

[Robby R. <ro...@pl...>]

On Sun, 2005-02-20 at 14:16 -0700, Chris Wade wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> This is the list I compiled last night from reading through the code
> and from using the app for a while.
> 
> I don't use the reporting features as I've never gotten anything
> productive out of them and have never really tried to make them work. 
> So that's one whole area I would address separately.  The way I use
> it, for now, is to keep track of my time on individual tasks. 
> Otherwise I'd have no idea how long I spent doing something.  So the
> main parts of the interface, to me, are the project page, the tasks
> page, the home page, and the task details window.
> 
> Here's a somewhat-randomly ordered list:
> 
> - when a job is declared private in the task details window, it
> disappears except for summary times.  It doesn't appear to be
> available for viewing anywhere.

Whereas it should probably show for only people who can see 'private'
entries I presume? Or just for the person who added that time?

> 
> - if you declare a job private when you start it, it disappears and
> you have no way of recording a stop time for it.  It'll just keep
> accumulating time and adding to the summary until you go into the
> database with a can of raid and exterminate it.  Either private jobs
> should be viewable or there shouldn't be a way to declare them private
> until you're done with them.
> 
> - Jobs that start on one day and finish on another don't show up on
> either day on the home page summary.  I'm working on this one, but
> it's a bit hairy.  More about this in a separate letter.
> 
> - nitpicky: I didn't know until I read through the code that you could
> sort the jobs in the task details window by start time and stop time. 
> These links could be more obvious.
> 

Agreed, perhaps this addresses a bigger issue with the design of the
site. I like the popups, but at the same time, it doesn't seem to really
add anything unless it would auto refresh the main window. Perhaps if we
removed the javascript popup, we could also address the truncated issue
and allow the main window to display more information about the work
entered. *my 2 cents*

> - comments for jobs appear to be truncated.  I haven't found anywhere
> to view my entire comment.  Having the option to view the entire
> comment whenever a job is displayed would be useful.
> 
> - This is already in the bug list but was one I would have added: It
> needs a per-user config option to set the time zone, so that users in
> a part of the world other than the server can see their own times
> rather than the server's times.
> 
> - What would be really cool, and very convenient, is if the task
> details window, on receiving an update, did some javascript to
> automatically update or reload the home page or the referring page
> before it disappeared.
> 
> - I often have to re-login.  It seems that this logic could be
> improved, but at the very least, it would be nice if the url and post
> data would be retained so that once I log in, it goes directly to the
> page I was trying to get to instead of back to the home page.  This
> comes up most often when I go to click on a job link on the home page,
> and the details window pops up, with the login form in it.  I click
> submit and the home page appears in smaller size in the details popup
> window.
> 
> 
> Other general issues include the fact that a lot of the user interface
> as far as forms, etc. could be rewritten so as to be easier to use and
> more intuitive.  Right now there's a definite learning curve.  And as
> I've been looking through the code, I really want to re-do all of the
> HTML display code.  Right now there's a bunch of php code mixed in
> with pure HTML output, which I'd like to avoid.  It doesn't need a
> template engine to accomplish this, but rather an intermediate step
> would be to use here-doc notation judiciously and concatenate all the
> output at the end before sending it to the browser.  In my ideal world
> of worlds, I'd like to output everything to XML and then use an XSLT
> stylesheet to transform it into a web page.  But that's a little
> further on from where I'm at in my skillset right now.  Version 2?
> 

This is where smarty/version 2 comes into play. I would prefer to
address some of the big bugs, and work on display features for version
2.

> I'd also like to rearrange the config file and manage all the class
> includes a little better, and add to come of the comments in the code
> to make better descriptions of what is happening.

I would also like to remove the ?content=page entries as well. If we do
this right, we could make the system a bit more manageable/flexible for
new modules/plugins.

-Robby

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