Levelling via "helper" scripts ?

[Lincoln Phipps <lincoln phipps openmutual net>]

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Was thinking that we'll never really get resource levelling really sorted out in
Planner and we need not re-invent the wheel trying to do this hard problem.

So why not provide a way from within Planner to launch "helper" scripts ?

In planner we have a HelperScriptName (stored in Project file) and a
HelperScriptPath (unique and local to the PC) and various flags and what
I envisage happening is that automatically or via a button click the helper
application is exec'd (on Windows it could be an EXE or a batch file and on
Unix it could be any shell or binary).

The helper script/app takes the data (could even be a temporary copy of the
project as XML and does its stuff on the data and then signals (via touching a
file would be cross-platform as opposed to signals) and then Planner merges or
replaces the project with the new data.

The advantages of this kind of method is that we are independent of language.
If someone has done a great resource levelling in say Prolog or Java then we
(or anyone) just have to do some XSLT to get the Planner file to the desired input
format and then reformat back into Planner XML.

It also allows for non-open applications to be used i.e. proprietary scripts
or libraries which have non-Free licensing terms or may be freeish but not
compatible to GPL.

Comments ?

Lincoln
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