Nonlinear Ideas Inc. Forums

Duncan,
   Clearly, you're a better man than I am; I could never get through any Knuth section in 25 minutes.

    Let's talk about how this might work.  Knowing that it has "potentially timed out", TT would have to cache the time at which it thought it timed and instead continue to accumulate time.  It would also have to display a dialog to let the user know they have a choice.  Upon making the choice either the record is left alone and running (not accepting the timeout) or the record is sliced off by the difference between the record time and the cached time.  If the dialog is being displayed, the user can't alter the start time, so there shouldn't be any weirdness with altering the time to before the start of the timeout.  Most of the machinery for this is already in place (timeout mechanism, adjusting record end times at stop, etc.).

   A persistent setting will have to be added to the configuration (takes about 15 minutes from GUI to persistence including the version check for backwards compatibility).  The biggest part will probably be the testing.

    I'll add it to the mod list for the next release.  It may not make the cut, but it looks like something that would probably get into the application.

Thanks,
james

P.S.  I didn't realize anybody was actually using the "Idle Timeout" feature.  I guess we may have to revisit the decision to cull it from the Time Tracker Multi-User version.

james

I'm assuming that by a "template" system, you mean that *you* (the user) would supply the HTML as a file and Time Tracker, when generating an HTML output, would look for the location of the file and then replace all the fields with values.  You would also have to supply values for the fields; these values would be stored so that when you generate the report, you only have to update the ones you want to change.  Some values, like the date, would update automatically and some you would be able to alter.

First, we need a definition of what the tags would look like.  Let's assume you would use something like a tag enclosed in square brackets (e.g. "[tag]") so that the generation mechanism could replace the tags with the intended text.  We should also agree that case will not matter for the tags.


Second, we need to define at least one tag that is for the record table itself.  We can call that something simple like [RECORDS].  If that tag was encountered, the entire tag would be replaced by the table of records which is current generated in the form.


Third, we need to define the other tags which would need to be there.  What did you have in mind?

Consider the following scenario: You're coding on your computer, with Time Tracker running and the "Stop Running If Idle" feature enabled. You lift your hands off the keyboard to look up an algorithm in Knuth Volume 4 Fascicle 1. The explanation is a bit complicated, so you have to spend some time puzzling it out. Finally after 25 minutes you look up, and the Time Tracker window has popped up, which means the 25 minutes of hard work have been ignored, and you have to manually add a work record.

Feature idea: Instead of defaulting to ignore, give the user a choice of whether to ignore the idle time or add it to the current task. If they stepped away to go to lunch, then they can select Ignore. If they were working on something relevant to the current task but not involving the keyboard or mouse, they can select Add.

Yes, there is already a Do Not Timeout button for this scenario, but who remembers to click it when you're working away and Time Tracker is running in the taskbar. Better to have the program ask you when you get back to the computer whether you were doing something productive. Of course, make the current behavior the default, but allow people to turn on this option.

- Duncan

Wow, a public forum where I can once again raise my voice in support of a template system to style the reports output. Geeze, I wish I had those emails I mailed a couple years (or more) ago?! I recall some great suggestions.

I enjoy being able to cut and paste the report into an email invoice. I wish I could have TimeTracker generate it in a layout that would work form my preset 550px wide invoice space. Heck, I'd like to be able to generate the report as an invoice and then email it! ...then I'd want to be able to import my address book into it; too much to think about.

Time Tracker 2.5.1 has been released and is available on the Nonlinear Ideas website.

This release should be fully backward compatible with any previous version of Time Tracker.

– Major Features -

• We’ve added the ability to “limit” any task to a fixed amount of time.  This can be configured so you can set it any time you start working or just when you want it.  This feature was requested by one of our users “down under” (thanks Ian).
• We’ve added the ability to round to minutes.  This was asked for by one of our users.
• Fixed the icons so they had at least one other color (yellow).  Since the desktop icon was black, some users couldn’t see it at all.
• Fixed the colors on Vista so that they appeared correctly.  We can’t say they are pretty, but at least they are consistent.
• Added support for subscription based licenses.

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Nonlinear Ideas Inc.