Thanks for the great software, bsag.

I was wondering where would be the best place in the forum to put suggestions for future upgreades.  I hope this is a good place. 

I’ve been looking at different GTD software over the past month.  This one has been my favorite, but I do miss of few of the features of MyLifeOrganized.

I really liked recurring tasks such as “change the car’s oil” which would show up as a next action 3 months after I last marked it complete.  It wouldn’t clutter up the home page, and would only show up close to the time that it was due.  And there are quite a few items that would be recurring tasks that we need to get out of our heads and into a system.  Stuff like monthly heartworm pills for the dogs, yearly license renewels, taxes, birthdays. 

This next suggestion is confusing, but the example should clear it up:
It would be terrific if there was a way to mark a next action as dependent on another next action within the same project so that the dependent next action would not show up in the next action list until the primary action is completed. 
For example, if your project is “plant a garden” which consists of these steps “1) get seeds” “2)plant seeds” “3)add water” There is no reason cluttering up the Tracks home page with the last two actions because they are impossible to complete until the “1) get seeds” action is completed.  Instead they should show up on the next action list in the proper contexts automatically as soon as the “get seeds” action is completed.  This will make the list next action list smaller, and not make the todo list so overwhelming.

The reason I didn’t specifically set up a forum for feature requests is that I’d prefer that people add them as tickets in the Trac system on the Development site, because it’s much easier to keep, umm… track of requests there. However, feel free to discuss things in this Coffee bar forum if you like as well.

As it happens, both of your suggestions (recurring tasks and project dependencies) are already planned, and will appear in the next release or the one after that (depending on how long it takes.). So no need to add those as a ticket

bsag - 29 June 2006 05:19 PM

As it happens, both of your suggestions (recurring tasks and project dependencies) are already planned, and will appear in the next release or the one after that (depending on how long it takes.). So no need to add those as a ticket

Does this mean that you’re feeling less hesitant about dependencies than your comment in the ticket comments suggests? (“11/17/05 21:46:43: Modified by bsag: Some interesting ideas here, but they are actually quite complicated to implement (or at least, to implement well). The main problem as I see it with adding any complexity is changing the user interface without making it cluttered and difficult to navigate. I’m certainly going to try to add a start date (as that’s the thing I most miss myself in Tracks), but I’ll have to think more about dependencies.“)

I have to say, recurring tasks and project dependencies (and start dates, which seem also on the way) will make Tracks even more valuable - and I already consider it a godsend! Keep up the excellent work.

Also, could you drop any hints on when “the next release or the one after that” might mean? Are we talking days, weeks, months, a year? I know the standard answer is “it’ll be done when it’s done,“ and I’ll certainly accept that as an answer. As I struggle with patience, I get more tempted to upgrade to trunk, which is almost certainly a big mistake as I don’t really know what I’m doing and my system is working as it is.

Yes, I am feeling less hesitant, because I’ve thought about ways that it could be achieved. In fact, start dates are already implemented in the trunk.

I’m going to go with “it’ll be done when it’s done” :-D

Seriously, it’s impossible to be much more precise because of the pressures of everyday life and work. I try to release as soon as possible (when we’ve ironed out all the bugs we can find), so the next release won’t be a year away, but it might not have project dependencies or recurring tasks in it yet. We’ve already added start dates (as I mentioned) and a mobile interface to the trunk version, so if it’s looking like the rest might take longer, I would release this version as a new stable release then carry on with the development for the next, for the impatient people