Re: [O] Collaborating with TODO lists and clocks.

[Sebastien Vauban]

Samuel Loury wrote:
> I recently encountered the issues of having to collaborate with other
> persons on the same task (all of us would need at some point to clock
> into this task).
>
> I thought that changing the value of the variable org-clock-string could
> help, but I have not tried it yet. Let me explain why it could help:
>
> It is for the time being set to "CLOCK:", but imagine that the user A
> set it to "CLOCK-A:" and the user B set it to "CLOCK-B:" (in their
> respective .emacs files), then after some time a clocked task would then
> look like:
>
> * Do something
>   CLOCK-A: [2013-09-05 Thu 07:55]--[2013-09-05 Thu 08:46] =>  0:51
>   CLOCK-A: [2013-09-04 Wed 09:05]--[2013-09-04 Wed 09:41] =>  0:36
>   CLOCK-B: [2013-09-04 Wed 08:00]--[2013-09-04 Wed 09:03] =>  1:03
>
> Then the agenda for each user would report only the time spent by
> himself.
>
> The time spent by each participant is clearly separated.
>
> There are some problems with doing so:
> - I don't know yet how to configure a report showing the time spent by
> every body,
> - I am not sure the clock time sum would work.
> - grepping for "CLOCK:" on org sources shows:
>   --8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---
>   ./lisp/org-clock.el:782:    (while (re-search-forward "CLOCK: 
> \\(\\[.*?\\]\\)$" nil t)
>   ./lisp/org.el:851: (defcustom org-clock-string "CLOCK:"
>   ./lisp/org.el:8501:               (while (re-search-forward "^[ 
> \t]*CLOCK:.*$" nil t)
>   ./lisp/org.el:15007: (defconst org-clock-drawer-start-re "^[ \t]*:CLOCK:[ 
> \t]*$"
>   ./lisp/org.el:15578: (while (looking-at "^[
> \t]*\\(:CLOCK:\\|:LOGBOOK:\\|CLOCK:\\|:END:\\)")
>   ./lisp/org.el:15579:       (if (member (match-string 1) '("CLOCK:" ":END:"))
>   ./lisp/org.el:17278:     (looking-at "^[ \t]*CLOCK:")))
>   --8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---
>   Those look like "hard coded" "CLOCK:" instead of using
>   org-clock-string. They would need to be fixed.
>
> What do you think of this solution? Has anyone already use a solution
> like this?
>
> Best,
>
> PS: I have tried changing the org-clock-into-drawer variable to be
> "CLOCK-A" and "CLOCK-B" so that the task would then look like 
> * Do something
>   :CLOCK-A:
>   CLOCK: [2013-09-05 Thu 07:55]--[2013-09-05 Thu 08:46] =>  0:51
>   CLOCK: [2013-09-04 Wed 09:05]--[2013-09-04 Wed 09:41] =>  0:36
>   :END:
>   :CLOCK-B:
>   CLOCK: [2013-09-04 Wed 08:00]--[2013-09-04 Wed 09:03] =>  1:03
>   :END:
> But it needs org-drawers to contain the values for each collaborators
> for it to work (and then should be maintained) and the folding mechanism
> did not seem to work for those special drawers.

Having thought about that in the past, I had thought of adding "tags" after
clock lines, such as:

--8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---
    CLOCK: [2013-09-05 Thu 07:55]--[2013-09-05 Thu 08:46] =>  0:51  :userA:
    CLOCK: [2013-09-04 Wed 09:05]--[2013-09-04 Wed 09:41] =>  0:36  :devB:
--8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---

Though, having separate CLOCK drawers would even be better for Git merges,
such as (keeping the idea of pseudo-tags):

--8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---
    :CLOCK:userA:
    CLOCK: [2013-09-05 Thu 07:55]--[2013-09-05 Thu 08:46] =>  0:51
    CLOCK: [2013-09-04 Wed 09:05]--[2013-09-04 Wed 09:41] =>  0:36
    :END:
    :CLOCK:devB:
    CLOCK: [2013-09-04 Wed 08:00]--[2013-09-04 Wed 09:03] =>  1:03
    :END:
--8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---

But, of course, a lot of development is required to make this become usable:

- clocking reports (`R') must be updated with the knowledge of the current
  user

- clock checking functions (`v c') must be enhanced to ignore clocks from
  other users

- etc.

Best regards,
  Seb

-- 
Sebastien Vauban