Printing out To Do List in Kontact

[pat201]

Re: Printing out To Do List in Kontact

Still going..... I was going to try to print out each major category using the filter view. I printed a couple that were short with no page breaks or anything. One printed fine with what appeared to be the appropriate distance between the top banner and the top of page and the "printed" date and the bottom of the page. The only problem was that one category printed fine with the lines connecting the sub to-dos. The other printed the master to-do, then skipped down enough space to probably put two more sub to-dos in there and then printed the rest of the sub to-dos which were all spaced normally. WTH? LOL

[woodsmoke]

Re: Printing out To Do List in Kontact

Ok

This is a complex post, I have tried to keep it in the order of "first mention" then "expansion on the first mention"

a) I have figured out how to print all of your data. we will get to that later.

b) I think that the information is stored as what I was taught a long time ago was called a "flat file" database. In other words, the information is stored in a linear manner from first to last. I will explain the consequences of that later. And example of the reasoning in this kind of storage manner was from the old "tape" days, the information was stored first onto the tape, second onto the tape, etc. I will give my reasoning for that later.
c) For some reason, the database "format" does not follow this convention: 01, 02, 03..... 10, 11, 12. for the numbers "1 2, to 9" inclusive.

B) I made as a test a set of todos which I numbered "01, 02, 03, etc. to 55 then 'test' as a finished todo".

I could not get it to "print" as either a printout or as a pdf. The first sheet stopped at 30 and then the title of the one finished to do was printed on the next sheet merely with the title. In other words, the todos numbered 31 to 55 were not printed, the data was "lost".

However I think that this is merely a "bug" in possibly a "return" or something as I will indicate later.

C)
i) when I exported, as I will discuss later, all of the todos were there but.... 01, 02, 03, to 09 were...AT THE END OF THE EXPORT! what?

so I figured I would delete the "0"s in front of the 1, 2, 3 etc.

B, When I deleted the "0"s then....the 1, 2, 3, 4, etc. were sprinkled through display on screen like 1 then 10, 2, then 20. But ...in the export.....they were all at the END of the export.

Ok...so I deleted them and the export had the numbers 10 through 55 inclusive and the test.

So....after all THAT oddness... I realized that the database is really STORING the information in ofder of when it was entered, even though that is not SEEN on the screen.

So then I typed in three new todos, in this order.
dog
cat
aardvark.

The VIEW on the screen is
aardvark
cat
dog,

But, when exported the three word todos were at the end of the todos, after the numbered todos and in the order that they were entered!
dog
cat
aardvark.

So here is the cut to the chase.

I) for some reason the database used to store the todos is a "flat-file/linear" (not a 3D "array"/relational database). AND, it has a non-standard(at least for moi) way of formatting the information entry.

"mixed information"
such as the number 640 appears after 55 onscreen
b01 appears before b1 and after aardvark onscreen
organize appears after dog
we like food appears after organize
you going with me appears after we like food.

HOWEVER in the export they appear in order of entry going down the page.

As a possible explanation, it may be that the developer(s) just "grabbed a database" to get the job done reasonably well, and put off making it "nice".

II) the way to get it printable.

a) Be in the todo module
b) go to File/export/export web page
then in the interactive box
change the dates to the day BEFORE the first to do date, and the day AFTER the last to do date.
c) hit the export button it will export as an HTML file.
d) when you click the file it will open in Konqueror(at least for me, you may have changed settings and it may open in FF or whatever browser you chose).
e) it will be formatted and will show the "calendar" for the days involved at the top and ALL of the todo list below that.
f) when one "prints" from within Konqueror one gets an "export as pdf"
g) when I had 25 lines the export was on one page with the calendar at top and the todos on the rest of the page, with the items IN ORDER of entery into the todo list.
h) when I added more lines, I got a pdf export that had the calendar on the first page and ALL of the todos on the next page. so there is, apparently, a "hard return" in the printout function.
i) the above items g and h were when I viewed the pdf in Okular.
j) when I actually printed a hard copy I got:
i) the two pages printed with ALL of the todos on the second page.
ii) all of the expected formatting things such as date, titles etc. were properly printed.
iii) the calendar items were printed in a pale blue "grid" with the text of the calendar in black.
iv) the to do was printed in a very fine font and included all of the information that is available to "tick" in what is to be exported. (i.e.: To-do, priority, completed, due date, categories.
v) the date of creation was printed on the second sheet only.

So cut to the chase.
The developer used an old database file structure which has "non-standard" formatting for numbers, except that in "mixed" information such as a01 it does formatt correctly.
Export as HTML it will produce a properly formatted printout that is in order of entry date for the to do then print that which produces a pdf which will print from within Okular.

Hope this helps a little, if you have further questions they are probably beyond my limited capabilities.

NOTE: at this stage, I don't think that it would do any good to file this as a "bug" at KDE. I think it is more a situation of too few people and too many tasks.

if I posted this information it would probably be put into the "do it later' file because the BASIC FUNTIONALITY is there it was just hard to figure out.

Possibly one of the mods here may able to personally contact the devs and mention that there really are people who are actually trying to use the todo function in a rather complex manner. I'm not privy to who knows who.

woodsmoke

[pat201]

Re: Printing out To Do List in Kontact

Your limited capabilities, my patootie! LOL I get what you're saying. I'm going to print this out so I can go step by step and not miss anything and give it a shot tonight. I'll let you know how it goes. Thanks for investing all the time!

Pat