Include recurrent/periodic tasks

I don't see a reason not to do this, but we have to define a nice user
interaction pattern and interface before including this in GTG.

On Tue, Mar 17, 2009 at 7:22 PM, David Prieto <email address hidden> wrote:
> Public bug reported:
>
> I would like to be able to add recurrent tasks to GTG, that is, tasks
> that I must carry out every day / week / etc.
>
> Would this be possible?
>
> ** Affects: gtg
>     Importance: Undecided
>         Status: New
>
> --
> Include recurrent tasks
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/344432
> You received this bug notification because you are a member of Gtg
> developers, which is the registrant for gtg.
>
> Status in Getting Things Gnome!: New
>
> Bug description:
> I would like to be able to add recurrent tasks to GTG, that is, tasks that I must carry out every day / week / etc.
>
> Would this be possible?
>

--
Bertrand Rousseau
Place communale 1, 1450 Chastre, Belgium
e-mail : <email address hidden>
tel : +32 485 96 69 86

We could base it on how Evolution does it. Looks quite nice and simple.

It would be nice if this covered GTD's tickler tasks too - things that you want to come back to in a week, or a month or whenever.

Duncan > that's why we have the start date, isn't it?

What do you think about the following implementation :

When a task marked as "recurring" is closed, that task is duplicated and the new one is added with a start date set to the next recurrence?

It would also avoid to clutter your tasks with the same recurrent task if you don't close it.

I made a blueprint for this and I'm willing to implement this. All suggestions are welcome.

https://blueprints.launchpad.net/gtg/+spec/recurrent-tasks

> When a task marked as "recurring" is closed, that task is duplicated and the new one is added with a start date set to the next recurrence?

This sounds like a good approach. The only downside I can think of is if some day there is a way to count # of tasks starting or due on a particular day, this would cause the count to be underestimated. OTOH I could see that people might want their counts to only reflect "unique" tasks anyway. So I think it's a minor issue.

I'm starting to poke at coding this... would love to hear anyone's ideas on implementation esp. how the UI ought to look

I was thinking about one little thing.
 It would be nice to be able to set a task recurring X days after it has been marked as done, instead of every X day.

For istance: "do laundry" is due every week, but this timespan has to be calculated from the last time I did laundry.

On Sun, Jan 31, 2010 at 11:57:59PM -0000, Luca Invernizzi wrote:
> I was thinking about one little thing.
> It would be nice to be able to set a task recurring X days after it has been marked as done, instead of every X day.
>
> For istance: "do laundry" is due every week, but this timespan has to be
> calculated from the last time I did laundry.

I was looking at RTM and noticed they also model both of these kinds of
recurrence, via the word 'every' vs 'after':

  "Take out the trash every Sunday evening"

  "Do the laundry again after one week"

In the first case, for cyclical tasks the recurrence could be based on
the start_date. So:

  new_task.start_date = old_task.start_date + recurrence_time

In the second case, for period tasks this would be based off the done
date, just like Luca mentioned:

  new_task.start_date = old_task.done_date + recurrence_time

A mini-feature I'd like to see with the recurrent tasks is a "countdown" type function.

This is for large multi-day tasks that can be quantized and measured in some fashion, such that you do a percentage of the work on each recurrence of the task, until you're done. Examples:

Read 10 pages per day:
  * Read biology textbook daily: to page (N*10)

Review/clear 100 emails each week:
  * Clear email inbox to (1200-N*100)

Looking forward to this hopefully being added soon! I like the every and after options.. I'm also willing to test.

It seems to me that there are 2 different types of recurrence: by FREQUENCY (e.g., every week, every 2 weeks, etc.), and by DATE or relative date (e.g., the 15th of each month, the last Friday of every month, the first Tuesday in September, etc.) I would really like to see both types of recurrence supported, since in real life most people have both types of tasks.

I know that this would make the recurrence feature more complicated to implement, but it would be a really useful feature. For example, I frequently have tasks at work or at school that are due on the last Friday of every month, the first Monday of every month, the 15th of every month, etc., and scheduling these with a tool that just allows scheduling things every n days is a hassle.

Also, for Frequency-based tasks, I would like to see not just 'every n days', but presets for commonly used frequencies, e.g., every /1-2-3-4-5/ (pick one) /days-weeks-months/ (pick one) in drop-down lists, or something similar.

I know all this is a lot to ask for, but it is just my 'wish list' for an ideal application.

This feature should really be included in 1.0. :-)

Hello,
    What is the status of this bug? I'd really love this feature;

    I feel the "every <duration>" and "after <days>" implementation seems nicest (though I don't know how well it will work in other languages) and am willing to implement this.

    In order to prevent conflicts with text in a tasks' description, for example:

Propose Software Solution for ABC
    ABC Company would like to automate a process where they take backups every week.

    I propose using @every and @after as keywords; this would automatically categorise tasks as being periodic or scheduled.

    Another solution would be to have after/every within the title of task, but IMHO, that doesn't look too good.

Cheers,
Arun.

The status is I think basically everyone agrees it's a nice feature we
need, but no one is working on it since everyone's focused on other
projects. If you'd like to have a shot at creating a branch to
prototype the feature, that'd probably help move things forward.

On Sun, Aug 08, 2010 at 10:29:07AM -0000, Arun Tejasvi Chaganty wrote:
> Hello,
> What is the status of this bug? I'd really love this feature;
>
> I feel the "every <duration>" and "after <days>" implementation
> seems nicest (though I don't know how well it will work in other
> languages) and am willing to implement this.
>
> In order to prevent conflicts with text in a tasks' description, for
> example:
>
> Propose Software Solution for ABC
> ABC Company would like to automate a process where they take backups every week.
>
> I propose using @every and @after as keywords; this would
> automatically categorise tasks as being periodic or scheduled.
>
> Another solution would be to have after/every within the title of
> task, but IMHO, that doesn't look too good.
>
> Cheers,
> Arun.
>
> --
> Include recurrent/periodic tasks
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/344432
> You received this bug notification because you are a member of Gtg
> contributors, which is subscribed to Getting Things GNOME!.
>
> Status in Getting Things GNOME!: Confirmed
>
> Bug description:
> I would like to be able to add recurrent tasks to GTG, that is, tasks that I must carry out every day / week / etc.
>
> Would this be possible?
>

I think that, before coding, we should work on a mokup for the UI changes
and how to modify the Task class to support that. Anyone has ideas?

On Aug 8, 2010 10:15 PM, "Bryce Harrington" <email address hidden>
wrote:

The status is I think basically everyone agrees it's a nice feature we
need, but no one is working on it since everyone's focused on other
projects. If you'd like to have a shot at creating a branch to
prototype the feature, that'd probably help move things forward.

On Sun, Aug 08, 2010 at 10:29:07AM -0000, Arun Tejasvi Chaganty wrote:
> Hello,
> What is the ...
> You received this bug notification because you are a member of Gtg
> contributors, which is subscribed to Getting Things GNOME!.

>
> Status in Getting Things GNOME!: Confirmed
>
> Bug description:
> I would like to be able to a...

Rather than using @every and @after, it might match the current date scheme to use every: and after: in the quick-add bar, like date: and defer:, which already take days of the week and month as options. I.e., "sleep in every:saturday" and "clean up office date:tomorrow every:week" I guess we don't already have date:1 for "pay rent date:1 every:month"

As an aside, I don't see that tags belong in this colon syntax. Everywhere else, @ marks a tag. Using it in the quick-add bar adds the tag, but leaves it in the title as well, which looks cluttered, especially in hamster... In all other respects, the quick-add bar is right on, and way cool.

What's the status of this bug? I would love it if a task manager finally has this feature!

dAnjou> unfortunately, there was no progress at all... There is still no blueprint/specification/mockup how it should work, how it should be designed, etc. If you want to help, you can write down your ideas / use cases (how would you like to use this feature) in this page:
https://live.gnome.org/gtg/blueprints/repeated_tasks

We have to collect ideas, create a specification and then code it (I guess the easiest part) Right now, I spent all my spare time on releasing next GTG (and it is quite a lot of work...)

For completeness it would be nice to have yearly tasks such as paying taxes, planning holidays and buying birthday presents.