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

[Axel Kielhorn]

Hi Bernhard,

I pulled 

> 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?

No, just adding 

#+LATEX: \begin{sideways}
#+BEGIN: org-gantt-chart
#+END:
#+LATEX: \end{sideways}

to the documentation would be sufficient.

> 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.

Lowlevel-scale doesn’t seem to have an effect, adjusting y units may prove more 
useful.

> 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 title calendar.

This is probably something that should be addressed in pgfgantt.
A flight to Alpha Centauri takes about 1600 days.[1]
If you assume 5 mm per day that would still need 8 m of wallpaper (and a larger 
office).
I probably wouldn’t care about sub-day efforts in this case.
Emptying the litter box will be a checkpoint item, not a scheduled task.

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

Great. 

>> 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 super task.

The last (as in time, not position in file) deadline will be promoted to the 
super task, right?
That way I can keep an „Integration of Submodules“ task and deadline that.

>> 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?

Can I build a gantt chart from a sparse tree?
The sparse tree shows me what is assigned to whom.
What I want to see is the effort and the time the effort is scheduled.

This is probably too much to ask since org is more personal manager and not a 
project planer.

> 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.

I think these are different things. Not scheduling a person to do two things at 
the same time may improve efficiency.

Greetings Axel

[1] Not including the time needed to build the air^Wspace port.[2]
[2] Sorry, since you are in Stuttgart that should be: Not including the time to 
build the railway station to get to the air^Wspace port.