Re: org-jira.el... and Org conventions (Bastien, Carsten and all)

["Sebastien Vauban" <wxhgmqzgwmuf-geNee64TY+gS+FvcfC7Uqw@public.gmane.org>]

Hi Bao,

"Bao Haojun" wrote:
> I have implemented org-jira.el, bringing org-mode and Jira system
> together.
>
> Wrote a Wiki page for it on emacswiki:
> http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/OrgJiraMode
>
> Hope somebody find it useful, if he/she is also using Jira and loves
> org-mode.

I had never heard of Jira, but your work definitely looks very promising.
IMHO, it should be compared with org-x and its extension to Redmine, among
others.

But this triggers, for me, another "concern" which is the very wide variety of
ways to define the same thing.

Let's just take how we represent who's gonna be assigned a task:

- In most examples we see on the Net (or in the Org manual), people use tags
  with person names (or abbreviations).

- In your case, you mirror what's done in Jira (I guess) and you introduce a
  property "Assignee".

- In Org issues (http://orgmode.org/worg/org-issues.html), some tasks are
  given a property "Who" to indicate who has to work on them.

- In tasks used for interacting with TaskJuggler, one uses a "Resource-Id"
  property.

- Still another approach is used by Juan Reyero in his advertised "Org-mode
  tricks for team management" (see [1]), using a combination of TODO todo
  keywords for his own tasks, and TASK keywords for tasks assigned to members
  of his team.

All of this makes it hard to have one independent Org file, and be able to
cooperate with external tools (like Jira, Redmine, TaskJuggler and others) on
a "on demand" approach.

You want a Gantt chart?  You need to add (or rename) "Resource-Id" properties.

Now, you would like a Web-based Bug Tracking system?  Too bad: you need to add
(or rename) properties "Assignee" or ...

So, my point is: wouldn't it be better if we proposed standard properties in
Org (in the manual), and implemented mappings in the Org "integration"
packages (org-jira, org-taskjuggler, org-redmine and the like)?

So, say for example that, from now on, it's more standard in Org to use
"Assignee" (or anything else) for representing who's assigned a task, and have
every package map the property "Assignee" to whatever keyword used in external
tools for representing that concept?

If we do such,

- we _do not impose anything_ (everybody is still free to represent this task
  the way he wants, be it properties or tags)

- we ensure an easy transition to use any external tool for those that used
  the "to be defined" standard properties.

Best regards,
  Seb

Footnotes:

[1] http://juanreyero.com/article/emacs/org-teams.html

-- 
Sebastien Vauban