Re: [O] Testers / Feedback wanted: Gantt charts via org-gantt.el

[Bernhard Schmitz]

Hi Axel,

thanks for your feedback

> I tried org-gantt on a current project and ran into one problem:
> 
> I track progress with
> * Task [%]
> and
> * Task [/]
> 
> Of course the % causes a problem when exporting to LaTeX.
> I suggest to either ignore [%] and [/] or use them as an alternative to show 
> how
> much is completed.
> It is probably a better metric than hours worked.

I do not quite understand: Is this an org mode feature (I could not find any 
documentation - you can possibly tell I haven't been using or mode for too 
long), or is this just something that you do yourself?
While I agree that it would be a good idea to use those numbers, I'm a bit wary 
of implementing something that is not based on official org mode features.
As a preliminary measure, I now ignore % signs.

> pgfgantt doesn't handle \ganttbar commands without start and end date.
> Therefor I can't export an incomplete chart.
> You may want to set the entries with missing scheduling information to the 
> first
> day of the chart.
> (Maybe mark the task or label with a color to indicate that they are 
> incomplete.)
> (See below for some different ideas.)

I fixed this. You can now set :incomplete-date-headlines and :no-date-headlines 
to keep, inactive or ignore.
If inactive, the styles set via :inactive-bar-style and :inactive-group-style 
are used.
All options also have an org-gantt-default... defcustom, which can be set if 
you don't want to set it for each chart.
 
> A two month chart doesn't fit into \textwidth.
> I wrapped it into a sideways environment (provided by rotating.sty), maybe a
> sideways option?

Hmm, I don't see an advantage of having a sideways option vs. wrapping it 
manually, but perhaps I'm missing something?
I have added an option :lowlevel-scale (e.g. 0.5 or 0.75) that will scale the 
complete resulting chart.
You can of course also use the pgfgantt options (:options) x unit chart and y 
unit chart for more specific scaling.

> For a project with 2000 person hours[1] I'll probably need a separate export 
> and
> print it on A0 paper[2].
> Some kind of scaling would be fine (show weeks / month instead of days).

You can already set :title-calendar to "year, month[=name]" and add "compress 
calendar" to the :options list to use months instead of days.
Note that you should set :weekend-style and :workday-style to the same thing, 
as org-gantt will otherwise mark some months as weekends.
Unfortunately, if you have sub-day effort estimates, this will currently not be 
displayed correctly, as the start and end shift is computed based on days. I 
should probably look into that.
Supporting weeks is difficult, as pgf-gantt does not natively support them for 
compression, only for titlecalendar. 

 
> For a huge project it may be nice to limit the levels printed:
> Just Module 1 - 8 for the Management and each Module with the submodules for
> the project leader.
> Similar to maxlevel in the clocktable.

I added an option :maxlevel (and org-gantt-default-maxlevel)

> I'm not sure about inheritance:
> If I have a deadline for a task, should the subtasks inherit that deadline 
> unless an
> explicit deadline is given?
> If I have a deadline for a task and efforts for all subtasks, should the task 
> inherit
> that effort?
> 
> That way I can give a deadline to the task and estimate efforts to get an 
> initial
> chart.
> Using this chart I can divide the subtasks between workers, rearrange the
> deadlines for the subtasks and finally define a scheduled date for the main 
> task.

This works for ordered subheadlines. Deadlines are propagated downwards, if the 
subheadlines are ordered.
If the subheadlines are not ordered, deadlines are only propagated upwards, as 
it is not clear which task(s) should inherit the deadline.
So you can set a deadline to the (last) subtask, and it will be propagated to 
its supertask.

> This gives me another idea:
> Filter / color by tag.
> Print only tasks tagged :Axel: to show my workload, and print tasks tagged
> :Sam_One: to show tasks I have delegated.
Isn't this already doable by using sparse trees? Or would this involve some 
unnecessary hassle? I'm not an experienced enough org user to determine that, 
but I don't want to replicate functionality that already exists.

> Color tasks by tags to show who is assigned, white for unassigned tasks.
 Noted for future support.

Regards,
Bernhard