Hi All,
Hope you will take the time to read this one. From the
outset I was a
little confused with the use/sharing/restoration of
collections. At
first I was just muddling around figuring out what was going
on, but
now I think I have some insights into real areas of
confusion. (My
discussion is limited to collections used for calendars, but
there may
be higher-order issues that kick in as collections cross
functionality, i.e., include calendars, email, tasks, etc.)
Background
When you first install Chandler and enter the calender mode,
you see
"My Calendar" and "Trash" in the
upper left corner. My Calendar
represents your main collection, and Trash is a special
collection of
disposed items.
Now, suppose your user name is "fred". If you
do not create any new
collections, but simply share My Collection in calendar
mode, it will
create a collection on the Cosmo server called
"fred_s_calendar".
This is not obvious, and the only way to really know this is
to pay
close attention to the URLs is supplies for sharing Read or
Read/Write
access.
My initial thought in sharing was simply to be able to
backup my
data--I wasn't focused at all on sharing with others.
Thus, I didn't
really expect to need to know the collection name, other
than "My
Collection".
However, as I uploaded and installed new versions of
Chandler, when I
would go to "Restore Shared Collections" I did
not see "My Calendar",
but rather "spincycle_s_calendar" (my user name
is spincycle). So I
would restore that name. But then, rather than migrating
the data to
My Calendar, it sat in a new collection called
"spincycle_s_calendar".
Now, I wasn't sure what to do: use the spincycle calendar?
use My
Calendar? delete spincycle?
I made the mistake of putting new items in My Calendar and
publishing
it. I later discovered, that this caused the creation of a
collection
called, "spincycle_s_calendar-1", and then the
next time
"spincycle_s_calendar-2" Of course, now I know
how to deal with this,
but man, this is going to confuse the heck out of a lot of
newbies.
The confusion got worse as I discovered and tested using
additional
collections: one for work, one for social, etc. My
Caldendar seemed
to be the place to view everything overlayed, but it is also
a place
to store things.
On top of that, deleting collections does not remove them
from the
server. This is actually good, however, at the time of
"Restoring
Shared Collections", you ought to be able to tell what
has been
deleted and what is currently active -- in case you've lost
track of
the names you were currently using.
Potential Solutions
1. Don't use the name "My Calendar" --
personally I HATE the whole
damn Microsoft "My <data type>" model.
When I'm looking for files,
everything starts with letter M. Name the initial
Collection the
username: SpinCycle or Fred or Mitch or Pieter or Mimi or
Priscilla
OR
2. Make the "My Calendar" simply a view overlay
rather than an actual
storage collection. Thus, you might start with another
collection
called "personal", and then add from there, and
then view them all
together in "My Calendar". I dunno, this might
be a complete re-work,
and confusing too.
OR
3. Document this and have FAQs and pop-up windows in
Chandler that
make the current model crystal clear in advance.
Anyway, I am now using a collection called Sowers_All. No
more
putting anything in "My Calendar".
Hope this was helpful. (And if there is a way to
permanently delete
some of my old collections from Cosmo, let me know
Jim (at Eritrean Cafe in Oakland)
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