timewarrior/doc/project.txt
2016-07-10 12:48:09 -04:00

116 lines
3.9 KiB
Text
Raw Blame History

This file contains ambiguous Unicode characters

This file contains Unicode characters that might be confused with other characters. If you think that this is intentional, you can safely ignore this warning. Use the Escape button to reveal them.

Timewarrior Project
===================
Timewarrior is a program that records tagged time blocks that represent tracked
time. This data is then used to create reports that show how that time was spent.
To make this task easier, and more useful, Timewarrior can access holidays, a
pre-defined working schedule, and support flexible time/date specifications,
implement a simple stop-watch tracking feature, generate custom reports, and
apply a set of rules to impose constraints and check the data.
Using a hook scripts, Timewarrior can be used as a backend time-tracking
feature for Taskwarrior, any other program, or simply as a standalone utility.
Timewarrior aims to be the tool of choice if you need to track time and generate
timesheets.
Goals
-----
- Provide a personal tool to easily track and report time spent, with low
friction.
- Support all workflows.
- Provide an extension-friendly tool.
- Support policies, events via the rules system.
- Integrate with Taskwarrior, Tasksh.
- Store data in plain UTF-8 text files.
Non-Goals
---------
- No dependency on Taskwarrior, Taskserver or Tasksh.
- Time tracking is about recording the past, not planning the future.
- No cloud support, no sync support, all data is local. Tracked time is
sensitive personal data and will not be transmitted.
- No explicit multi-user support, although using overlapping tags to track
individuals will be possible.
- No features without a compelling use case.
Reports
-------
Anticipating all reporting needs is impossible, therefore custom reports are
required. Rather than only provide the Taskwarrior design where flexibility is
provided via configurable options for fixed-format reports, Timewarrior will
additionally provide a more flexible alternative, which provides configuration
and data via an extension API. This will not limit the kind of reports or
supported formats that can be added.
Timewarrior will ship with several extension reports, which serve as example
extensions for users to modify and improve, perhaps contribute back to the
project.
Timewarrior will also have a limited set of built-in reports: tabular reports
and charts showing tracked and untracked time.
Tags
----
Tags represent tracking categories. Tags are arbitrary UTF8 strings. A tag may
be a single unquoted word, or a quoted string if it includes spaces. An interval
may have any number of tags.
A tag may be used without being defined, but if a tag is defined, then it may
have associated metadata, such as a start date representing the first date on
which it may be used, and an end date, when it expires, and so on.
Hints
-----
There are built-in hints that influence processing. For example ':debug' puts
the program in debug mode, and ':fill' indicates to a 'track' command that you
wish to fill in the available time. Another hint, ':week' means that a command
should only affect the last week.
There are user-defined hints, that can act as macrosaliases, for example the
':staff' hint could mean a 'Staff Meeting' and 'Admin' tag set.
Extensions
----------
A simple extension mechanism allows custom reports to be written and shared.
Most reports will be external scripts that use the extension API.
Undo
----
All commands that change configuration or data need to be recorded as-is in the
undo.data file, so that an 'undo' command can later rewind the changes properly.
All undo will happen at the command level. That means if one command results in
three changes, a single 'undo' command will revert the three changes associated
with the one command.
Rules
-----
Rules are configuration-based settings and logic. Rules will be able to define
conditions and actions, thus implementing policies.
DOM Access
----------
Timewarrior will support a DOM, allowing rules and extensions to access internal
data.
Roadmap
-------
Timewarrior will not initially implement all the above features. A roadmap lays
out the plan for getting to a full-featured release.
ihttp://taskwarrior.org/docs/design/plans.html
--- Raw Notes ---