Task:PIM

Revision as of 11:58, 31 October 2008

This page started as a consequence of this ITt thread: Did you say PIM? Come here please.

Vote on current enhancement requests or open new ones at http://bugs.maemo.org
Summarize more complex proposals here or in new wiki pages.
Link to good and bad ideas, projects, examples out there.

This exercise is as useful to Nokia as to the own community and 3rd party developers in seeing what are the great ideas and points of most interest. And the names able to move them forward. Think visionary. Think Harmattan. Squeeze your brains showing that you are getting it so right.

General needs

In trying to move outside the PIM-trap, please list here the things you want to do with your tablet related to managing your daily life. Who knows, maybe there are better ways of doing "PIM" besides of the regular Calendar+Todo+Addresses approach.

Knowing where I need to be today
Knowing where I need to be next
Knowing where I was last friday at four

Knowing when I have free time next week / month
Knowing if I'm free tomorrow at six

Knowing the context of my events (work, stydying, hobbies, friends)

Seeing all the times I've been to place X or met person Y
Having the device notify me if it notices that I'm running late or forgetting something (GPS, location awareness?)

naranek

Let's not forget there's a context outside Maemo - Ovi.com, the user's dektop etc. - Regardless of the necessity to "think outside the box", do we have a common understanding that when we say PIM, it means at least Calendar+Todo+Addresses+Notes+Syncing? ossi1967 09:17, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Desired Features

General/shared features

SIMPLE views for the UI dialogs. most of the time as a user I do not require all these things, yes we need them there, but an option to dumb down or remove the extra stuff would be really important to me.

for instance, most todo items for me simply need a description, once they are on the list I know they need doing

--lcuk 22:25, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

The GTD philosophy is to collect simply and easily, and process later. A quick entry option would be wise - or a tabbed interface like mCalendar or Pimlico Dates.- boxofsnoo

Allow items to be tagged with more than one tag and allow filtering on multiple tags.

So, a contact may work for Company X, be alumnus of school Y and be a part of SIG A. I would like to be able to assign tags "X", "Y", and "SIG A" and later filter on any of these tags to find all my contacts who work for "X" and were once in "Y" etc.

-- cyta

Some things aren't essential but really help. For example, a context-sensitive zoom... for example, in Pocket Informant, you tap on a day in the month grid and that day grows to take most of the grid space, and everything else squashes down to minimum size.

Palm's newer address books did this too, as you scrolled through the names with the hardware keys, the currently selected one was double the height, and had much bigger fonts.

I can see how this could extend also to the todo list, too --boxofsnoo 01:38, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Calendar

- Calendar function with iCal support - import/export functions
- Interaction (or import from) with Web enabled calendars - namely Google, Zoho Planner, 30 Boxes
- Integrate Calendar with Addressbook component - for easy inter communication between apps
  - Automatically import anniversairies and birthdays from addressbook oponent and calculate (current age e.g.) - asys3
- Interact Calendar with Web Browser - so as to enable opening a web link from a Calendar event directly
- Allow generic and open format of Calendar data - so that it can be used by 3rd party apps as well (i.e. sqlite)
- Synching
  - Support syncml to synchronize dates to mobile phone and a server pim database (e.g. funambol, evolution) - asys3
  - Support CalDAV - boxofsnoo
  - Support synching over bluetooth and wlan - asys3
- Interaction with email program - allow to open a mail with a specific date attached - asys3
  - Better yet, copy the mail body into the notes field of the event. - boxofsnoo
- Monthly grid view
  - Multi-day events - boxofsnoo
  - Multiple calendars - boxofsnoo
  - Quick-glance task identification - icons? - boxofsnoo
- Integrate to-do items into schedule - items with no date should show up on 'today' - boxofsnoo
  - wouldn't that get very messy quickly? have options for the display [ ] events [ ] tasks [ ] mails ... ? --lcuk 22:40, 30 October 2008 (UTC)
    - most PIM apps on, say, Palm do this already. The options are typically to hide undated, or only show tasks that are pending. Mails are completely unnecessary, if it's a task that's mailed, it will typically already be converted into one or the other. - boxofsnoo

Address Book

- import/export functions
- Integration with the Calendar component - allow for cross application interaction
- Import/export from web Contact apps - namely Google Contact, Yahoo Address Book etc.
- Allow user added fields (e.g. 4 mobile phone numbers if needed, 2 URLs for office/private website) - asys3
- Either allow multiple format masks for fields like phone numbers or do not enforce a format on them.
  - (E.g. "US" formatted phone numbers just look wrong in other countries) - cyta
  - Agreed, most of the best contact apps do not enforce formats. - boxofsnoo
- Integrate with Maemo email client - so as to allow selection/adding to and from the addressbook and email client together
- Allow active web links from any contact information to interact with Web browser.
- Allow generic and open format of Calendar data - so that it can be used by 3rd party apps as well
  - should be VCARD - look for best suitable VCARD definition - asys3
- Synching
  - Support syncml to synchronize contacts to mobile phone and a server pim database (e.g. funambol, evolution) - asys3
  - Support synching over bluetooth and wlan - asys3

ToDo List

- Items should have start date, completion date, priority, tags as well as description and completed.
- Should optionally be finger-friendly (especially relevant for to-do lists)
- Subtasks/Projects
- Integration with sites like ToodleDo or RememberTheMilk.
- Recurring tasks
- Categorized/tagged filtered view

User Interface Considerations

There's a choice between the "one application PIM suite" (as Outlook, Evolution) and many smaller applications. I guess on a tablet it makes sense to offer smaller "per-use-case"-applications the way the Pimlico suit currently does. ossi1967 09:51, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Technical Design Considerations

I'd appreciate a design where we concentrate an application framework for data storage and retrieval. This should be the central part of the OS and used by stock applications as well as 3rd party apps. End user applications like "Address Book" and "Calendar" or "Syncing" access this database, but can be changed by the user without loosing data. ossi1967 09:51, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Status of current PIM apps

Could we list what's good and what's missing in the various current PIMs? Might give us an idea of where to start improving things (especially for those who've not used all of them)

I've started with a few apps I could find, there are doubtless others, please add them (and urls, and change the urls there if there's something better) --Lardman 30 Oct 2008 21:56 UTC

Pimlico Dates

http://www.pimlico-project.org/dates.html

Good

Bad

Seems like its no longer actively developed for Maemo

Pimlico Tasks

http://www.pimlico-project.org/tasks.html

Good

Bad

Seems like its no longer actively developed for Maemo

Pimlico Contact

http://www.pimlico-project.org/contacts.html

Good

Same database as stock "Contacts" application; works as extended view to postal address and other data stored on the tablet, but not shown normally
Part of an already usable workflow that includes syncing with SyncEvolution

Bad

Seems like its no longer actively developed for Maemo
Bad cosmetics. Looks terrible.

GPE Calendar

http://gpe.handhelds.org/projects/GPE-calendar.shtml

Good

Has :

Day view
Week view
Month view
List view

Can publish/retrieve to/from remote iCal servers (eg eGroupware)

Has multiple calendars (eg remote, work, social)

Has reminder service

Can publish/export as iCal

Bad

Missing Native sync support
No Two-week (or 3-day) grid view
No Year view
Missing Per task formatting (icons would be nice) --boxofsnoo 21:00, 30 October 2008 (UTC)
No options for start/stop of the day, or time increments (15 min, 30 min, 1 hour)
No options for non-shaded/combined weekends
Slows down to a crawl when there are a lot of events in the database.

GPE To-do list

Good

Categories
Ability to purge completed tasks

Bad

Buttons are too tiny, even for stylus use
No subtasks/projects or tags
No start date
No integration with calendar (apart from applet)
No alarms on due date

GPE Contacts

Good

Quick lookup 3-letter tabs on left
Search
Categories

Bad

Does not integrate with Mail
First, Last name display is not configurable, sort looks off
First, Last name parsing is often wrong. Needs at least 2 separate fields

mCalendar

http://www.khertan.net/mcalendar.php

Good

finger friendly
in active development
desktop integration
maemo targeted

Bad

Grid views missing
Can't deselect an online calendar from sync - all or nothing
Can't enter tasks into subcalendars
Tied only to Google calendar
No iCal import

slapd

Small but fully featured addressbook engine

kdepimpi

https://garage.maemo.org/projects/kdepimpi/

For more information please see: http://www.internettablettalk.com/forums/showthread.php?t=15566

osmo

Port

Good

Supports SyncML
Supports iCal (import & export)
Supports birthdays
Supports encrypted storage using libgringotts
Supports libnotify

Bad

While GTK2, not Hildonized nor very touch _finger_ friendly (stylus usage is OK)

[I haven't ported or tried 0.2.4 yet. I'll get on it this weekend. ~~--]

SyncEvolution

http://www.estamos.de/projects/SyncML/

Good

Syncs Contacts and Events via SyncML servers (like ScheduleWorld.com)
Result fully integrated with stock applications as well as Pimlico Dates/Contacts
Great customization
Works well in daily use

Bad

Command line only, need to edit config files
No direct syncing (desktop to tablet)

Retrieved from "http://bugs.maemo.org/Task:PIM"

Categories: Community | Development

@@ Line 82: / Line 82: @@
 #** should be '''VCARD''' - look for best suitable VCARD definition - [[User:asys3|asys3]]
 #* Synching
-#** '''Support syncml''' to synchronize dates to mobile phone and a server pim database (e.g. funambol, evolution) - [[User:asys3|asys3]]
+#** '''Support syncml''' to synchronize contacts to mobile phone and a server pim database (e.g. funambol, evolution) - [[User:asys3|asys3]]
 #** Support '''synching over bluetooth''' and wlan - [[User:asys3|asys3]]

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Task:PIM

Revision as of 11:58, 31 October 2008

Contents

General needs

Desired Features

General/shared features

Calendar

Address Book

ToDo List

User Interface Considerations

Technical Design Considerations

Status of current PIM apps

Pimlico Dates

Good

Bad

Pimlico Tasks

Good

Bad

Pimlico Contact

Good

Bad

GPE Calendar

Good

Bad

GPE To-do list

Good

Bad

GPE Contacts

Good

Bad

mCalendar

Good

Bad

slapd

kdepimpi

osmo

Good

Bad

SyncEvolution

Good

Bad