From: stephen@moclips (Stephen L Nicoud)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.open-look
Subject: Re: Why is the File Manager in OW 3.0 so buggy?
Date: 1 Sep 92 03:17:12 GMT
Reply-To: stephen@boeing.com (Stephen L Nicoud)
Organization: Boeing Computer Services Research and Technology, Bellevue, WA USA
Originator: stephen@atc.boeing.com


   On 29 Aug 92 01:34:54 GMT in a comp.windows.open-look article, nghoff@albert.monsanto.com (Norman G. Hoffman) wrote:

   Craig Bishop (csb@gdwb.oz.au) wrote:
   : I disagree about the Calender Manager. It has a long way to go before
   : becoming a useful tool. All the bits are there it just does not work 
   : in large environments which try to use Sun's client/server methods to
   : the max.
   
   What would you say must be added to the Calender (sic) Manager
   to make it useful (besides a spell checker)?
   
   nghoff@bb1t.monsanto.com

Here is a list of enhancements/extensions to Calendar Manager that,
IMHO, I think would be very useful:

 Calendar Manager should manage two kinds of entries: "Tasks" and
   "Notes".

 - Tasks are activities which require the user to do something.
   Examples included meetings, phone calls to make, etc.  All Tasks
   have a field that can be checked off to indicate that the Task was
   completed (or in someway addressed).

   Tasks are classified into two categories:
   
      Appointments - Tasks which are to be executed at a specified time
	 or during a specified period of time (equivalent to CM3.0
	 Appointments).
      
      Actions - Tasks which are to be executed on a day, but do not have
	 a specific time associated with them.  Actions are clumped into
	 two categories:
      
	 Anchored - Actions which are listed on specific days
	    (equivalent to CM3.0 ToDo items)
      
	 Floating - Actions which always move with the current day.
	    When a Floating Action is "checked" as done, it no longer
	    "floats" (i.e., it becomes a completed Action).

 - Notes are notices to the user which do not require the user to do
   anything.  Notes include things like holidays and birthdays.

   Notes are classified into two categories:
   
      Simple Notes - Notices associated with a particular day or days.
	 Examples include holidays and birthdays.
   
      Reminder Notes - Notices about items that are due to the user.
	 Reminder Notes automatically graduate to Floating Actions when
	 the due date is over-run and the Reminder Note has not been
	 checked off as having been attended to.


 - Allow Day/Week/Month Views of any combination of categories of
   Tasks (Appointments and Actions) and Notes (Simple Notes and
   Reminder Notes).
   
 - Allow "Priorities" to be added to any Task.  Priorities could be
   expressed as a number, with "1" being very important and
   succeedingly higher numbers indicating less importance.

 - Allow sorting of Entries (Tasks and Notes) on any combinations of
   the fields which comprise the entry (e.g., prioritization or the
   contents of the "what" field) in ascending or descending order.

 - Allow the user to specify that for a repeating daily entry
   that weekends are not to be included.

 - Allow the user to specify a repeating entry like "the second Monday
   of every month".

 - Allow the user to control the access privileges (browse, insert,
   delete) of other users of only Appointments, or only Actions, or
   only Reminder Notes, or only Simple Notes or any combination
   thereof.

 - Allow the "author" of an entry to have "Modify" privileges.

 - Allow the user to specify a file as the database to be used for
   Calendar Manager.  This would allow a user to keep and maintain
   personal calendars for different activities.  For instance, if a
   user wanted to keep track of off-work activities, they wouldn't
   have to clutter up their work-related calendar.  Being able to
   create a label which would be associated with the alternate
   database files would allow easy access via the "Browse" menu.

 - Allow specification of repeating Alarms.  Basically, this is an
   Alarm which continues to go off at specified intervals until the
   user turns it off (at 10 minutes before a meeting, 5 minutes, 2
   minutes, 1 minute, zero hour; or every ten minutes; or etc...).

That's a first crack at some useful capabilities of Calendar Manager
that I believe would be very useful.

Stephen
-- 
Stephen L Nicoud  <stephen@boeing.com>  bcstec!bcsaic!stephen
Boeing Computer Services Research and Technology, Computer Science
Bellevue, Washington  USA
"I ask unanimous consent to revise and extend my remarks."