[samoconnor]

Originally Posted by whpalmer4

One thing to be aware of if you are going to do this is that you will not get an accurate view of future repeating events, because only the current event is present in your database, with the next one created when the current one is completed.

Thanks for the warning. However, I don't see why OF couldn't use a com.apple.calendars.Recurrence record to express the recurrence in the the iCal database. (See Apple Applications Schema Reference)

Originally Posted by whpalmer4

If you aren't attaching duration information to your tasks, so that they actually occupy some space in the calendar, how is just a list of due dates generally useful,

It is useful because "busyness" at a given point in time is likely to be proportional to the number (and nature) of upcoming due dates.

I don't have the time or the inclination to maintain a full MS-Project style project plan that tries to tell me what I'll be working on each day. The attraction of OF is that it is light-weight but won't let things fall between the cracks.

So, I won't be wasting time attaching duration meta-data to every sub-task. However, given that I do have due-dates attached to some tasks, I would like to see those ones overlaid on the calendar. This gives me a rough idea what will be happening, for example, during a given week 2 months from now. My OF data can't tell me exactly what I'll be doing 2 months from now (in fact any system that tries to know exactly what I'll be doing 2 months from now will almost certainly be wrong). But, my OF data contains information that could help me to try to avoid clashes between calendar events and due dates 2 months from now; and help avoid piling up due-dates at the same time.

Originally Posted by whpalmer4

especially to someone who isn't familiar with the tasks?

This is about having a prompt as a staring point. If someone else is looking at due dates in my calendar, they can say "It looks like you'll be doing late nights to meet due dates in the last week of June", or "How about we head to the beach the week after all these due dates here". The resulting discussion will handle the actual importance and likely impact of the tasks in question.

In my case, my wife has a fair idea of what I am working on anyway because we each organise our separate consulting jobs around the other's workload and looking after a 2-yearold. If she sees "Due: Acme Co. Final Report" she knows that I'll be busy for a few days before that. If I made a nice gantt chart, it would show me having the report gradually completed over the previous month, but the reality is that I'll do most of it in the last few days. I tend to be busiest just before due dates.