Add tags feature

[AdrienLemaire]

Would be nice if we could append a tag to a bill, to sort them by categories (rent, food, party, etc).

Thanks for you hard work !

[almet]

Hi, thanks for the idea. We have been discussing this previously, about the ability to categorize the bills and we are not sure that's something we would like to have. In other words, we really want the UI to stay clear and additional features to keep out of our way.

Categorizing sounds like a feature I (personally) don't need. It doesn't mean that we will not implement it. It's just to make you aware of our position on this one (see http://blog.notmyidea.org/how-are-you-handling-your-shared-expenses.html for more info).

IMO, having categories means having to manage them (add/remove/edit) and thus an extra zone/page for the user.

Now, maybe do you have a precise idea on this feature request, or an idea about how to implement the UI to go with it so it can stay simple for the end user? Maybe could we have different "levels" of usage. So by default the project comes without categories and you can activate them in the project's settings? (or maybe this is a bad idea ;))

thanks again for the idea and for discussing this.

[AdrienLemaire]

Well actually, I'm a bit confused with the current behavior already.

Take the example if I create a bill about food for me and my flatmate. I bought 4000, therefore payer=me and "who has to pay"=my_flatmate. It makes me +2000 and the roommate -2000, all good. But now my roommate paid me, how the hell do we submit it ? One option is to make him payer with me to pay, but it makes no sense. The other option is just to delete the bill, but again we might prefer to keep an history of all the bills.

Also, if I create the same bill 4000, payer=me and "who has to pay"=(my_flatmate + me) , it gives exactly the same result, me+2000 and my_coloc-2000 . Seems to be a bug.

To get back to the original issue here, I understand that some projects wouldn't fit with tags. That's why the best solution I can see would be to add an boolean option add_tags in the create_project_form. Then, if the new project has this option activated, we can duplicate the user list in a tags list, and associate a tag to a bill in the same way "who has to pay" is implemented (an update allow us to deselect and select another tag).

Then, to keep things as simple as possible, in the list bills view, we could just make the tags column sortable, and that would be enough for a starter.

This request actually doesn't come from me, but one of my users.

I'm completely overbusied until the end of the year, but I'll be pleased to contribute starting January, well I'll get more time for that.

Hope my suggestion fits in your requirements, we can still debate it on irc otherwise.

Cheers

[almet]

Alright, so we are discussing a number of different issues here.

The first one is about the possibility to a) mark a balance as paid b) do a direct transfer of money between two persons. This will be handled by #18 and #43, respectively.

The second one seems a misunderstanding about the role of the balance. If you have a bill of X payed by A for A and B, then A should receive X/2 and B should give X/2, so it does not sound like a bug to me, if I understand you correctly.

Okay for the "optional" tagging mechanism, although I'm not sure having it directly in the creation form is a good idea. Maybe just once the project is created, if the people want to have it, they could go to the project settings to activate it? After all, it's a "power user" feature, IMO, and power users always want to tweak settings.

[almet]

That should be easy to add. Do you want to work on it?

[aavenel]

Instead of having an optional system, maybe we can just add a tag when we write something like #tag in the description field (Like twitter hashtag). Thus it will be a "Power user" feature and doesn't disturb the current workflow.

I don't really see the need to have a complicated system to add/remove a category but it could be useful to have a graph which show how much you spend in each category. Something like stacked progressbars (http://twitter.github.com/bootstrap/components.html#progress) could do the trick. We can add another page like "Project Dashboard" to show this, and show a text to explain how to use tag when there isn't any.

I can try to work on this as long as I manage to upgrade our Bootstrap version (it broke the layout when I tried, and I don't know css very well ...).

[almet]

This sounds like a plan, yes! I agree with the idea of a dashboard also.

Hmm, but I don't see how it related to twitter bootstrap, why is this a blocker for you?

[almet]

(Ah, sorry, just got it when visiting the link. I though it was a link to another chart lib with js)

[arnaudbos]

I know I'm not very active on this project anymore, (mainly due to another side project I really want to finish first), but you might be interested in RaphaëlJS.

Just one line of code: http://raphaeljs.com/reference.html#Paper.rect and you have your progressindicator with no Bootstrap-upgrading hassle. I'm sure you don't have time to waste on CSS, especially if you're not familiar with it. Could be a good way to learn though ;-)

Good luck guys.

[aavenel]

The aim of using Bootstrap was to avoid using another library. I just managed to update to the new bootstrap version, it was not so difficult after all ;)

The work is in progress for tag feature but it should be quite easy now !

[almet]

What should we do with this?

[almet]

@aavenel , I know it's a conversation from the past, but do you have something done for this? Would you like to fix this?

[almet]

After all this time, I'd say : why not? Should we add tags support?

[SiM]

Hi @almet ,

In my case it would be usefull to be able to add tags, so I would be happy if this is implemented ;)

Btw thank you for this simple and efficient software !

[allisongu]

Hi @almet , @nachow16 and I would love to work on this feature!