GTT: Announce & Question

[Linas Vepstas]

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Hi Derek,=20

Long time ... good to hear from you.

On Tue, Sep 04, 2001 at 07:35:44PM -0500, Derek Neighbors was heard to rema=
rk:
> > > So, the 'big question': what is the best way of tying/integrating this
> > > with gnucash?=20
>=20
> I saw part of this in reading the logs of the list and why I subscribed.
> I havent seen the time keeping application in a while,=20

the original gtt 1.4.0.2 is a stopwatch, and not much more.

> but best I can tell
> invoicing for consultancies has WAY more to do than simply logging time.

right.  And I'm not intending gtt to solve this (at least not yet ...)

> You get into cost based accounting by project, incorporating direct and
> indirect costs along with issues of bill vs. non billable time.  (I had
> the fun experience of writing such applications for lawyers in a previous
> life)  Also, its common that different 'types' of worked are 'billed' at
> different rates.

I added different rates & billable status in the new version.  I have
not added things like 'charges for courrier service', I haven't really
thought about that.

> In a nut shell Im thinking running a 'time tracking' program with out at

gtt is also single-user, its not currently multi-user/web based,
although I'm really turned on by the idea of being able to (simply)=20
build network/web-based/client-server apps with the beauty of a
desktop interface (gnome (or kde)) with the inherent multi-user
of apache.  I think this is the holy grail that SOAP, XML, XML-RPC,
MS .net etc are looking for, but I don't think anyones quite found.
Certainly not in the free software world.

Derek, this *might* well be the next obvious area for an infrastructure
project, such as gnue, to tackle.  Should we talk more?

> least having it do basic project management is a semi wash.  The more

Nahhh. There's room in the world for a simple stop-watch app that isn't
all things to all people.  (e.g. everclear-- everything to everyone)

> complicated accounting can be added with time, but a time clock for
> billing without tying it to 'todos' or 'projects' wont be used too well
> (or accurately) IMHO.

Well, I am assuming that people will use something like evolution for
that. (although I'm sorry, but the evolution to-do list manager needs
a lot of improvement.)  (I *love* the evolution addressbook. Although
it lacks any kind of contact manager ...)

> Has anyone looked into a system that does something like this? =20

http://www.linas.org/linux/pm.html

lists dozens.  And its not a complete list.

> Personally
> at work we have started to use Double Choco Latte
> (http://dcl.sourceforge.net) and it is pretty interesting.  It does the
> work order part really well.=20

gtt has zero administration: either its already installed, or you
rpm or deb it in.  There's no setup.

double-choco-latte requires an admin to install & configure apache,=20
install and configure php, set up security, set up accounts, etc.=20
which is a challenge for a non-programmer, and impossible for a
non-'power-user'.

Never mind that you really want to run double-latte on a server=20
that has raid, and is backed up every so often, etc.=20

------
One reason that microsoft has gaping security holes is because they
keep flirting with this idea of how to set up client-server-type
peer-to-peer-type applications (remember hearts in win3.1 ?) and
make it a 'zero-administration' setup. =20

I think zero-admin is a serious issue, just don't know what to do about
it ...

> However it is very weak on the contact/account management side of the
> fence.  I have started to build interfaces to it with GNU Enterprise.  I
> planned on dumping the core data into GNU Cash for the general ledger.
>=20
> Im curious what others are doing to solve this problem using GNUCash, or
> is Linas the pioneer. :)


Well, my other poineering effort, back-burnered for the moment, is to=20
create web plugins for gnucash.  I want the multi-user version of
gnucash to operate as if it were a kind of browser applet, so one could=20
seemlessly interoperate with e.g. double-choco-latte.

Basically, you get the nice GUI of a desktop app, but you get the=20
web-page power of serving html/apache/cgi-bin/php.

I mostly know how to do this if I can ignore the rest of the world and
invent ad-hoc interfaces .... but that what I'd do would be hand-tailored,=
=20
and ad-hoc, disturbs me.  But no one has yet built the kind of generic=20
tools for desktop-to-web-application integration that I want. =20

I have a very very vauge notion of starting a project for this, but=20
am reticent  ...

--linas

>=20
> Derek


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