Re: [mylyn-integrators] Switching Mylyn tasks externally.

[Mik Kersten <mik@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

I see Activity Based Computing as much more abstract and general than the Task-Focused Interface, as the latter is all about a very specific kind of activity that can be defined as a task.  Walking into your office is not a task, but could well be a relevant activity.  The task-focused interface is all about a task-based segmentation of the knowledge graph that you navigate and create as you work.   I did like the Rooms stuff when I first saw it at PARC, but it was more a combination of doing open source and Agile development and seeing Stuart Card's degree-of-interest trees that provided some of the concepts that Mylyn ended up building on a few years later. 

That said, the Context API is more abstract than that.  For example, Tasktop Dev uses it to create "working set" contexts that turn into automatic lists of bookmarks (working set landmarks) of web pages.  Others at UVic have used it for capturing navigation sessions that could span many tasks.  As such, you can use the API to activate and deactivate contexts that are not strictly related to a task.  If you activities do more closely correspond to the Tasks API (eg, the Task List is a useful data structure for you) then yes, as Miles points out, you can activate tasks programatically using the API.

Mik

--
Dr. Mik Kersten
Tasktop CEO, Mylyn Lead, http://twitter.com/mik_kersten
Assistant: zoe.jong@xxxxxxxxxxx, +1-778-588-6896, Skype: zoe.e.jong


On 2012-11-06, at 11:35 AM, Miles Parker <miles.parker@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> 
> On 2012-11-06, at 10:42 AM, Steven Jeuris <steven.jeuris@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>> 
>> As far as I've read research on task-focused interfaces (I actually think I read Kersten's PhD when I started my master's thesis on ABC) it's focus has been more on providing the correct context within just one application. So I feel although some concepts definitely are similar, the main difference is focus. ABC likes to take a broader approach and incorporate all aspects of activity without limiting itself to any system or application.
> 
> As I'm sure you appreciate, the current limitation to a particular application/domain is simply an artifact of having had to adopt a certain application in order to realize it. No question that the concepts could be applied more generally, and they should be :) -- the value of extending Mylyn focus services beyond the IDE is clear, and it would be great to see more folks exploring that potential. So the work sounds interesting and makes sense from a practical POV as well -- thanks for sharing more about where you might be headed with it! Please keep the community us up to date on your progress and of course don't hesitate to ask more questions on this list or on the forums!
> 
>> 
>> This is exactly the reason why I would like to integrate Mylyn within an ABC system. Mylyn is state of the art when it comes to providing the correct context within an IDE. What I am more concerned with, is also allowing to integrate profilers, communication, decompilers, music players, possibly even another IDE, ... or any relevant context the user desires into one overall activity context.
>> 
>> In order to achieve this, I believe the most basic functionality I would need is allowing to change the currently active task. I need to be able to switch to the correct Mylyn task, which is associated with a certain activity in the ABC system.
> 
> To answer your specific question, the Mylyn implementation is purely an OSGi stack with Eclipse dependencies. Those currently carry some UI pieces, which would mean that you would actually need to have a Mylyn app (as opposed to say a web service or something) running in the user space -- you'd probably want that anyway to provide transparency. You'd need some way of calling into the Java API externally of course, or using some other kind of bridge, but that's a generic/solved problem. And the API for activating and deactivating Mylyn contexts ("switching to a Mylyn Task") is straightforward. You can store arbitrary contextualization with the Task.
> 
> What isn't quite clear is what information you'd want to get to and from Mylyn. But my immediate thought is why have a separate activity tracker at all? Why not simply adopt the Mylyn system as the system of record and focus on integration with non-IDE apps and services? That carries the enormous benefit of being able to interface with all of the existing ALM connectors and the entire ecosystem that Mylyn supports.
> 
> cheers,
> 
> Miles
> 
> ______________________________
> Miles T. Parker
> Tasktop
> http://tasktop.com
> Committer, Eclipse Mylyn and Virgo
> Project Lead, Model Focussing Tools and AMP
> http://milesparker.blogspot.com
> 
> 
> 
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