GnoTime Application News
                 ========================

GnoTime, The Gnome Time Tracker, allows you to organize ideas,
measure the time spent on to-do list items and generate invoices.

The latest releases continues to focus on usability and convenience
features, making GnoTime easier to use and thus more powerful.

New in the 2.3.0 Release:
-------------------------
The main changes in this release are:
* a new implementation of the projects tree using the GtkTreeView
  component which fixes a lot of the bugs regarding the projects
  tree manipulation and prepares the way for many customizations
  in future releases.
* an initial implementation of a tray icon that displays timer status
  and allows the user to toggle the timer by clicking on it.
* a rewrite of the idle detection using the XScreenSaver extension and
  of the timer system to make it more system power conservation
  friendly.
* port of the report system to use guile version 1.8.
* many changes in the configure script, including porperly checking for
  guile and gconf and version of available DBUS.
* removal of some deprecated APIs usage.


In addition, many bugs have been fixed, including:
* broken behavior of drag-and-drop (#1856268)
* compiles but crashes on startup in fedora core 5 (#1802501)
* activity journal truncates seconds (#1706365)
* green bar flickers when value changes (#1171204)
* dragging project to make sub-project will not scroll (#831808)

New in the 2.2.3 Release:
-------------------------
This release brings better internationalization in reports with locale
based formating of times and monetary values. The newly added support
for DBus messages allows users to start/stop the timer and save/reload
the data file from the command line using the gnotime-remote
script. Also, an update user's manual covers most of the features
available in this version. In addition, many bugs have been fixed,
including:

-- Crash when saving to full filesystem (#1548248)
-- Day of century calculation error causing skipped day in reports
-- Conflicting keybindings (#1639477)
-- Invoice report doesn't work in locales other than C
-- Hidden question dialog when overwriting file during report saving
   (http://bugs.debian.org/422023)

New in the 2.2.0 Release:
-------------------------
This release sports a brand-new look-n-feel for the reports,
together with improved URL support.  The reports now use CSS style 
sheets, and can contain embedded images.  A 'publish' function 
using GnomeVFS makes it easier to copy reports to other systems, 
using ssh, ftp, http or any other supported method.  In addition, 
the following bugs were fixed:

-- Crashes when 'help' button clicked in certain dialogs.
-- Corruption of 'reports' menu, followed by crash.
-- Fix flyover help to actually work.
-- Add missing 'copy' to interval edit popup menu.

New in the 2.1.9 Release:
-------------------------
This release fixes a number of bugs, the most serious of which were:
-- Keyboard events were not resetting the timeout
-- Fix Help system so that help actually starts up.
-- Fix old, multiple scheme bugs affecting billing reports.
-- Provides 'infinite undo' for cut projects.
-- Keyboard cut (ctrl-x) fixed so that it cuts only if project 
   window has focus.
-- Can now specify day-of-week for the start of a new week.
   Also, end-of-day need not be midnight - its now configurable.
-- Remove obsolete menu entries (clear daily counters)
-- Fix flyover help on HTML reports
-- Fix order of yesterday/today columns.
-- Improve checks for Guile during builds
-- New whiz-bang SQL for reports.


New in the 2.1.8 release:
-------------------------
This release adds support for simple report queries.  In particular,
reports can now be generated for all tasks that occured between a
pair of dates;  an extremely general query system is now in place,
although it is not used except to perform this simple date query.

Toshio Kuratomi <toshio@tiki-lounge.com> provided a major 
cleanup of the documentation subsystem.  Goedson Teixeira Paixao
provided a new pt_BR translation.

Bug fixes:
-- avoid crash of 'yelp' help browser due to SIGCHILD zombie reap.
-- numerous other minor crashes fixed.


New in the 2.1.7 release:
-------------------------
Version 2.1.7 fixes some internationalization bugs, and ports the 
configuration system to GConf2. The 'custom reports' menu is now 
editable.  


New in the 2.1.6 release:
-------------------------
The "Daily Report" will show not only the total hours worked,
day by day, but will also show a bullited list of tasks worked
that day.  The main window display can now show total hours worked
for previous day and previous week.  Sub-projects can now be fetched
via scheme, allowing them to be included in reports.  The scheme
subsystem now includes an elementary type system, allowing more
complex structures to be built.  A half-dozen different crashes
have been fixed.


New in the 2.1.5 release:
-------------------------
The main window has been reformulated in a big way:  It
now includes sub-panels for editing project and diary notes.
This 'notes area' makes it far more convenient to make
extensive notes and 'blog' your way through a set of projects.

Also fixes bugs with backup timestamps, also with cut-n-paste
of project trees.


New in the 2.1.4 release:
-------------------------
The scheme interface re-design has been finished.
This means that the HTML reports are far, far more
configurable, and can be made to look much prettier.
The old, nasty table-formatting features have been removed.
It also means that tab-delimited export now works cleanly,
and other export formats can be easily added.


New in the 2.1.3 release:
-------------------------
The time credited to a project after the keyboard inactivity 
timer has tripped is now very easily adjustable.  Thus, if
the timer tripped because you were on the phone, you can now
trivially credit the project with any time, from zero to 
the full interval since the last keyboard/mouse activity,
by simply adjusting a slider in the timeout popup.

Backup copies of data automatically saved, automatically
pruned back, thus providing an archive of old data as well
as avoiding catastrophic data loss.


New in the 2.1.2 release:
-------------------------
A "major" change in the user interface: one must now
double-click to start a project timer running.  This 
makes navigation and task editing much easier and more
robust than the single-click interface, which was prone
to accidental-click problems, especially on laptop touchpads.
This makes GnoTime much more usable on laptops.

The 2.1.2 version is also the first official stable, 
non-beta release GnoTime. (December 27, 2002)

The 2.1.2 version also included:
-- Added new to-do list report
-- Run shell commands when project started/stopped (fixed)
-- Added tab-delimited export of to-do list
-- Removed cause of possible crashes (buffer over-run
   for large datasets).
-- Remember what state tree was left in between sessions.
-- Much improved scheme support in reports
-- Language translations now included as part of dist
-- Can now save HTML reports to file (again)
-- Now detects inactivity due to laptop shutdown
-- Fix start/stop timer icon in toolbar

Project Stats
-------------
Version 1.4.0.0:   4.0 KLOC of *.c and 0.4 KLOC *.h
Version 1.4.0.99:  9.2 KLOC of *.c and 1.2 KLOC *.h
Version 2.1.4:    17.0 KLOC of *.c and 2.0 KLOC *.h and 0.2 KLOC *.scm

News from the GTT, the Gnome Time-Tracker, Version 1.4:
=======================================================
August 2001
===========

* Lots of Big, Brand-New Features:
  -- Basic 'todo' list management has been added.  Projects can be 
     ranked by urgency, importance, status.  Planned start, end and 
     due dates can be specified, as well as an estimated sizing,
     and a % complete value.
  -- Sub-project support has been added.  New projects can be listed 
     as sub-projects of other projects.  The time totals will show 
     the total including sub-projects.  The Hierarchical tree can be 
     expanded / collapsed to simplify viewing.  The tree can be 
     re-arranged by dragging-n-dropping projects.
  -- The 'focus row' now works.  The focus row is the one with a box
     drawn around it... when editing the project properties, or viewing
     the journal, its the 'focus row' that is the one that's used.
     (In the past, all menu activities applied to the currently
     running project.  Now, all menu actions apply to the 'focus row')
  -- Arrow keys and carriage return now work in the main window.
     Up/down keys can be used to move the "focus row" up & down.  
     (The keyboard j & k also work).  The left/right arrow
     keys expand/collapse a sub-project list.  Hitting return selects
     the project.  
  -- A journal showing explicit start and stop times is now maintained. 
     Blocks of time can be annotated with memos.  The journal can be 
     exported as an HTML page, or printed (OK, printer support not
     yet finished).
  -- Infrastructure for storing price & billing information has been
     put into place.  This allows billing invoices to be generated.
     Tasks can be marked as billable, non-billable, on-hold, or 
     free-of-charge. Billing rates for regular, overtime, 
     double-overtime or flat-fee can be set per task.
     (Fancier-looking invoices still needed).
  -- Auto-merge/cleanup of short intervals supported. Extremely short
     intervals (the length is configurable) are automatically removed
     from the log files.  Slightly longer but still short intervals
     are automerged into nearby neighbors. Short gaps between intervals
     are coalesced as well.  You can specify a time period of 0 seconds
     to turn these features off.
  -- The journal GUI is based on extended HTML pages.  If you know
     HTML, then you can create customized report pages.
     User-defined reports (contained in ghtml files) can be added to the
     menus by typing in the filename into the 'new report' GUI dialog.
     Typically, a 'user-defined report' is one with customized layout,
     maybe a logo added, all-spiffed up & such.
  -- An inactivity timeout has been implemented. If the keyboard
     or mouse have been idle for more than some period of time, then 
     the clock is stopped.
  -- Scheme (guile) is used as an extension language, although scheme
     support is currently limited to report generation.
  -- The above features required an expanded way of storing data: and so
     there is now a new XML file format that stores both project and 
     journal data.
  -- Export to GnuCash coming soon, I hope ...

A very simple website for GTT is now up at 
http://www.linas.org/linux/gtt/gtt.html

  (This blast of new features by Linas Vepstas <linas@linas.org>)

Cost of new features: 
Before new features were added gtt was 4.0 KLOC of *.c and 0.4 KLOC *.h
As of now (1.4.0.99) the size is       9.2 KLOC of *.c and 1.2 KLOC *.h


Mon Aug 31 00:38:34 CEST 1998
=============================

* Log file entries can be customized. The start of a project uses the string
  defined in `Entry Start' in the preferences dialog. The end of a project
  uses the string in `Entry Stop'. Both strings can include the following
  macros:

  %t - the project's title
  %d - the project's description
  %T - the time ever in H:MM:SS (H = hours, MM = mins, SS = secs)
  %h - the hours spent on the project today
  %H - the hours spent on the project today (two digits)
  %m - the minutes spent on the project today
  %M - the minutes spent on the project today (00-59)
  %s - the seconds spent on the project today
  %S - the seconds spent on the project today (00-59)

  Thus the string `project %t started (%d)' in `Entry Start' would cause the
  following line to be logged:

  Aug 31 00:39:17 project Project's Title started (Project's Description)

  And the string `stopped project %t (%H:%M:%S)' would append the total time
  spent on the project today as in `(8:03:51)' (meaning 8 hours, 3 minutes and
  51 seconds). Alternatively you could specify %m to get 483 minutes (8*60 +
  3).


New since 0.12.0
================

* The configuration file is gnomified.

* The toolbar settings in the help window are part of the
  configuration file.

* The toolbar can be configured now. I found the default toolbar to be
  much to long when using toolbar texts.
  
* non-Gnome support has been kicked.


New since 0.11.0
================

* internationalized GTT and provided a de.po

* added an experimental help window using Gtk-XmHTML.

* rearranged/renames some menu items a bit.

* changes my own distribution to work with automake

* wrote some documentation - HTML and text.

* added the (optional) status bar. It just contains the title of the current
  selected project yet.

* added a popup menu when right-clicking on a project.

* added clear daily counter to the menus.




New since 0.10.0
================


Shell Command
-------------

In the Preferences dialog you can specify shell commands which get executed
every time you change or disable a project. You can use '%s' as a
replacement for the title of the new project in "Switch Project Command".


Log Files
---------

It is now possible to write log files. You will have to specify the complete
path of the logfile. '~' and environment variables are unsupported up to
now.

The timeout value specifies the time in seconds, that have to pass before a
selected project will get logged. It is a good idea to set this value to a
minimum of 10 seconds. If you clicked on the wrong project the first time
and correct your selection within 10 seconds, the wrong project will not
show up in the log file.