[emacs-wiki-discuss] Re: Planner-Newbie

[Sacha Chua]

Angus Lees <address@hidden> writes:

>> What's your main wishlist feature?
> "less features" ;)

Heh. Good point. I've been trying to hide the complexity of planner
with stuff like

http://www.emacswiki.org/cgi-bin/wiki/PlannerModeMethods and
http://www.emacswiki.org/cgi-bin/wiki/PlannerModeQuickStart ,

but I can understand why some people look at the list of .el files (>
400k characters!) and think Planner is overly complex. It isn't,
really; it's whatever you want it to be.

That said, the main planner distro includes all these modules to make
it easier for people to borrow other people's tweaks. I've tried to
keep things documented in the manual, although I suspect the manual's
also on the edge of incomprehensibility due to my additions.
<sheepish grin>

planner can be more than just a wiki. planner can also be just a fancy
way to color text, or have automatic annotations, or whatnot. In fact,
some people turn off the wiki-ness of planner. It seems to be more of
a library of handy PIM functions with a few recommended ways of
getting started...

> I *really* like the simplicity and flexibility of a wiki with some
> simple helper routines to manipulate lines that match a certain
> pattern.  I'm worried all these exotic reports, task databases, task
> hierarchies, etc will make people think planner-el is more than it
> is -- and that development will take planner further away from "just
> being a wiki".

What direction would that be in? Someone once asked me where planner
was going. It seems kinda odd that I can't name one specific
direction. planner.el tries to be a close approximation of the way its
users would like to plan. Some people don't even use the wiki-ness of
planner. <laugh> I remember seeing Planner on a computer at school and
being surprised that the person using it didn't use plan pages or
links at all.

But yes, conceptual complexity is a dangerous thing. I guess that's
why I'd like PlannerModeMethods to be the first document people read,
instead of PlannerModeQuickStart. I feel PlannerModeMethods can
reassure newbies that yes, you can start with something simple, and
you can stay with that if that works for you.

That's also why I encourage people who are new to Planner to send a
description of how they plan their day and how they would like to plan
their day to me or to this mailing list. Sure, people can find out how
to support basic workflows using PlannerModeQuickStart and
PlannerModeMethods, but the process of reflecting on what they want to
do helps, and other people can give them tips on that as well.

What would be some other ways of making sure planner stays simple and
flexible?

> As someone who only uses emacs-wiki through emacs (and never publishes
> anything to HTML), I'd like it if someone could hide task ids and find
> a way to make the hidden parts of long links not affect line-wrapping.
> (But neither of them bothers me enough to do it myself)

Hm. Perhaps M-x customize-face planner-id-face ?

-- 
Sacha Chua <address@hidden> - open source geekette
http://sacha.free.net.ph/ - PGP Key ID: 0xE7FDF77C
interests: emacs, gnu/linux, personal information management, CS ed
applying as a Debian new maintainer | looking for a grad school