Zanshin Tasks

Zanshin 0.5.71

2020-01-14T12:00:00+00:00

We are happy and proud to announce the immediate availability of Zanshin 0.5.71.

This updates the code to work with current libraries and apps from Kontact.

The GPG signing key for the tar is Jonathan Riddell with 0xEC94D18F7F05997E.

Zanshin 0.5.0 is out: 2018 will be organized!

2018-01-03T22:35:17+00:00

We are happy and proud to announce the immediate availability of Zanshin 0.5.0.

After 0.4.0 one year and a half ago and 0.4.1 last year (which wasn't publicly announced), this new release introduce new features. The 0.4 series was mostly about the Qt 5 port and stabilization, now we can be a bit more ambitious again.

So what's in store for that new release?

Errors coming from the system are now displayed properly in the main window;
Tasks scheduled in the future can be filtered out;
A task can be picked up as the "currently running" showing a nice overlay at the top of the screen, this is a reminder of what you're supposed to focus on;
Projects are now displayed grouped by their containing collection which can help separate better visually between work and personal projects;
Attachments are now supported for tasks (which nicely complete the "create todo" feature from KMail);
Tasks with recurrence are now supported (although we have a simple recurrence model for now);
And of course also a couple of minor GUI adjustments and bug fixes.

Under the hood, we also did some improvements:

Some error handling has been improved;
Some duplicated code has been factorized;
Some dead code has been cleaned up;
Issues pointed out by krazy and clazy have been addressed;
Feature level tests have been reworked and are better insulated from each other;
Our code related to dates have been ported to the new KCalCore ABI introduced in 17.12;
The biggest architectural change has been the introduction of a cache which speeds up our accesses to akonadi and allowed to adress a few bugs (we had some views exhibiting duplicated items, this is now gone).

So quite a lot of nice things in this release. We increased the features and polish of what you experience while improving the code base itself. All in all, this should be a very nice release.

As usual, you can grab 0.5.0 while it is fresh! Packages for KDE Neon and openSUSE Tumbleweed are already available, it's only a matter of time until the other distributions catch up.

Zanshin 0.4.0 is out: port to Qt5 done

2016-05-02T20:44:14+00:00

We are happy and proud to announce the immediate availability of Zanshin 0.4.0.

This release marks the end of our port to Qt5 and KDE Frameworks 5. It also means we're now compatible with the newest Akonadi and KDEPIM releases. It doesn't bring any new feature but the port itself is big news.

Despite the lack of features, we wanted to make this version as solid as possible, that's why we spent quite some time running quality tools on the code base to find potential issues. It results in quite a few fixes ranging from potential memory leaks, to pure optimizations.

We also wanted a slightly improved look. Nothing radical or fancy, but we spent time improving the layouts to have a better visual alignment all around and less unwanted margins. It looks even more tidy now!

Of course all the features you grew accustomed to are still here and it's time to rediscover them on this new technical backend.

As usual, you can grab 0.4.0 while it is fresh! You can download the sources obviously, which is the best way to have something up to date but a bit more involving. Packages are available for openSUSE Tumbleweed from the home:ervin repository, give it a bit of time for other distributions to catch up.

Now it's time for us to relax a bit and start preparing our next release, this time with new features and probably further visual changes.

Transition to KF5 almost done: Zanshin 0.4rc1 is out

2016-04-09T14:31:30+00:00

We recently released a first beta of our Qt5 port. Today, we are happy to announce the immediate availability of Zanshin 0.4rc1 (aka 0.3.91).

We're getting closer to the first stable release ported to Qt 5 and KDE Frameworks 5. This 0.4rc1 release is the result of the testing of our previously released beta. It mainly focuses on bug fixing and other quality improvements. In particular we did a few subtle adjustments to the GUI to make it more visually pleasing. We also fixed a couple of integration issues with KRunner and action shortcuts which were due to the porting.

As usual, you can grab 0.4rc1 while it is fresh! You can download the sources obviously, which is the best way to have something up to date but a bit more involving. Packages are available for openSUSE Tumbleweed from the home:ervin repository, give it a bit of time for other distributions to catch up.

Now we're waiting a bit for your feedback. We have exactly one bug left in our list for which a fix is in the work. If nothing else shows up we won't need a 0.4rc2 and next one will be the final 0.4.0!

Double release day, Zanshin 0.3.1 and 0.4beta1 are out

2016-04-03T19:09:02+00:00

Have you been wondering what we've been up to since the start of the new year? Well, we have been preparing the future of our product. We've been working not on a new release but two new releases!

We are then happy to announce the immediate availability of Zanshin 0.3.1 and Zanshin 0.4beta1 (aka 0.3.81)!

First, Zanshin 0.3.1 is a simple bugfix release. After Zanshin 0.3 started to be used more widely, two bugs were reported by our users which are now fixed: 1. in some cases the cursor in the editor would jump around preventing editing items has been tamed and shouldn't affect you anymore; 2. if you left your Zanshin running overnight, the Workday page content wouldn't get update at midnight, but now it reacts to change of day properly.

Second, Zanshin 0.4beta1 is a pre-release of our new branch. It doesn't bring any new feature, but this is the first release ported to Qt 5 and KDE Frameworks 5 which makes it big news. We've been using it in production internally for a few weeks now with no major issue in sight. Since the port was executed much faster than expected, we used the extra time for running quality tools on the code base. As such we hunted down quite a few potential performance issues and fixed a couple of leaks (of which the number in the application was surprisingly low). That is what we're releasing today.

As usual, you can grab 0.3.1 or 0.4beta1 while they are fresh! You can download the sources obviously, which is the best way to have something up to date but a bit more involving. Packages are available for openSUSE from the home:ervin repository, give it a bit of time for other distributions to catch up.

What's next? We'll keep stabilizing the upcoming Zanshin 0.4 and we'll also make a couple of GUI adjustment to make it prettier and slicker at places, nothing dramatic though. As soon as the final Zanshin 0.4.0 will be released, we will start working on Zanshin 0.5 which will bring new features again.

Happy Organized Year! Zanshin 0.3 is here!

2016-01-01T16:13:37+00:00

Finally! Four years after the first release of the 0.2 series, we are now happy to announce the immediate availability of Zanshin 0.3.0!

This release brings a lot of changes coming from our own dog-fooding of 0.2.x, discussions with designers and users feedback. It is also based on a completely reworked core which should serve us well for the years to come.

One of the main changes in the organization of your tasks is coming from the fact that now projects and contexts are in flat lists and not hierarchical anymore. Also, we got rid of the two application modes (contexts vs projects) which meant you had two inboxes to deal with, it was painful to sort your data on all dimensions.

Those sound like radical changes, but we paid attention to not gratuitously change everything, we have also been fairly conservative with the overall GUI and workflow and feel at home quite quickly.

Of course, we introduced quite a few new features in Zanshin 0.3:

tasks can be hierarchical now (which nicely compensate the new flat organization of projects and contexts);
all views can be filtered and we have a couple of sort criteria already;
a full editor is provided where you can set start and due date;
a new workday page is available to see all the tasks you should act on now in a single place;
ability to choose which collections are used to retrieve the data, so now you can hide the shared calendars you're not interested in.

All that while not compromising on some of the things we like: completely driveable using your keyboard and the ability to quickly enter new tasks.

And last but not least, this marks our first attempt at also dealing with notes and not just tasks. That's why this release also provides a small companion app which we named Renku. It is not our main focus, but a nice addition nonetheless.

It has been a long journey but we're happy we got there. We have been running around conferences presenting our plans for the reworked core and the testing strategy, it is now paying off with a very clean and modular code base. It also carries hundreds of automated tests. Of course it's no silver bullet against bugs, but for sure it helps us react faster to change and avoid regressions. It seems very likely that the number of defect per line of code in Zanshin 0.3 is much lower than 0.2.

We would like to thank Adriaan de Groot, David Faure and Matija Šuklje who helped us find quirks, provided feedback and supported us during the beta phase. Thanks guys, it is really appreciated!

As usual, grab it while it is fresh! You can download the sources obviously, which is the best way to have something up to date but a bit more involving. Right now, packages are available only for openSUSE from the home:ervin repository, but I'm sure others will catch up soon.

Of course, this is just a start and we're already busy with the future. The port to Qt5 and KDEPIM5 already started thanks to Laurent Montel's involvement. We also have further features on our roadmap and a team of students will join us for the first quarter of 2016.

We hope to see more promotion effort around Zanshin as well (if you're not technical and willing to help its your chance). That's why we also revamped the website in honor of the new release with a fresher responsive look.

In other words: we're starting this new year on strong footing. We wish you a lot of good things for the coming year and hope that Zanshin will support your efforts at getting your mind like water!

Look Ma' what I found under the tree! Zanshin 0.3rc1!

2015-12-24T18:35:00+00:00

Just in time for Christmas, we wished to deliver a neat present to our users. That's why we are very happy to announce the immediate availability of Zanshin 0.3rc1 (aka 0.2.91).

This new release builds upon the new technical foundations we put into place and published to the public for the first time with our previous beta. We have been listening to user feedback and fixed the bugs they found. We would like to thank David Faure and Matija Šuklje who have been instrumental in finding quirks, providing feedback and supporting us. Thanks guys, it is really appreciated!

They have been exhaustive in their testing and since we fixed all the problems they reported, we feel confident enough to label this new Zanshin as release candidate.

If no showstopper is found in the coming week, what we're releasing today is pretty much what you will get for the upcoming Zanshin 0.3 final release.

As usual, grab it while it is fresh! On the package front, openSUSE is still the most up to date distribution but if you feel adventurous, you can download the sources for the latest and greatest.

Zanshin 0.3 beta1 is out!

2015-12-17T20:20:00+00:00

Although the wait has been very long between Zanshin 0.2.1 and 0.2.2, we are now happy to announce the immediate availability of Zanshin 0.3 beta1! (aka 0.2.80)

Finally! We're getting a new feature release in sight. It brings a lot of changes coming from our own dog-fooding of 0.2.x, discussions with designers and users feedback.

Those sound like radical changes, but we paid attention to not gratuitously change everything, we have also been fairly conservative with the overall GUI and workflow and feel at home quite quickly.

Of course, we introduced quite a few new features: * tasks can be hierarchical now (which nicely compensate the new flat organization of projects and contexts); * all views can be filtered and we have a couple of sort criteria already; * a full editor is provided where you can set start and due date; * a new workday page is available to see all the tasks you should act on now in a single place; * ability to choose which collections are used to retrieve the data, so now you can hide the shared calendars you're not interested in.

All that while not compromising on some of the things we like: completely driveable using your keyboard and the ability to quickly enter new tasks.

And last but not least, this marks our first attempt at also dealing with notes and not just tasks. That's why this release also provides a small companion app which we named Renku.

It is a long journey but we're almost getting there. We will release a few beta releases before the final one. We are using it in production already, but ultimately the quality and stability of the final release is in your hands! Test the betas and report your issues! The more we fix, the stronger the release will be.

Grab it! Test it! And let us know how it behaves for you. So far we like it. :-)

Zanshin 0.2.2 transition release

2015-08-04T22:58:00+00:00

Three years, five months and eleven days... yes, it's the elapsed time since our last release announcement. But don't despair! We're still alive and kicking.

We've been busy working on our next release which is much more ambitious than the previous one. As part of this future release, we had to adjust a bit how we store some information. That is why today we are announcing a transitional minor release.

Behold Zanshin 0.2.2!

From the user point of view you should not see any difference with the previous bugfix release, but Zanshin 0.2.2 is here to help the data transition toward the future Zanshin 0.3.

It is especially interesting for users who want to test the bleeding edge and upcoming version as it is prepared. By using Zanshin 0.2.2 they will get forward and backward compatibility for their data allowing them to easily switch between versions.

As usual, grab it while it is fresh, it is available on a wide range of distros. Note however that most distributions will need a bit of time to catch up, so they might provide 0.2.1 for a little while longer.

Zanshin 0.2.1 bugfix release

2012-02-24T12:31:20+00:00

After the release of Zanshin 0.2.0 we got a few bug reports and worked on fixing those. This led us to the new Zanshin 0.2.1 release!

All reported bugs got squashed, there is no known bugs in Zanshin 0.2.1.

The most outstanding bugs fixed were the following: * "next month" for date input was in fact adding two months; * Sorting by due date was in fact sorting by the textual representation of the date, not really what one would expect; * Column widths were not restored when Zanshin is used as a plugin within Kontact.

There was also a couple of minor ones but those three were the most likely to be noticed by most people.

For this release I would like to thanks David Faure and Matthias Kretz who nailed down most of the dates issues.

As usual, grab it while it is fresh, it is available on a wide range of distros.