The K Desktop Environment

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3. Usage

3.1 Working with projects

In KTimeclock, there is the notion of a "Project", a "Sub-project", and "Tasks". In the tree-view window, a project will always appear at the upper-most level in the tree. Projects may contain one or more sub-projects or tasks, and sub-projects may contain one or more sub-projects or tasks (recurse infinitely at your own leisure).

By using sub-projects, tasks (and other sub-projects) can be grouped together into their own groups. This grouping should help make it easier to work on projects where there are a large number of individual tasks to complete by breaking them up amongst the various stages of the project.

3.2 Time calculated

When the clock is activated, time spent will be monitored for the currently selected task. Note that time cannot be monitored for projects or sub-projects; only tasks can have a time spent associated with them. Time will be monitored to the second.

As time is monitored, two different counters will increase. The first counter (Session) is the total amount of time spent on the given task during this execution session. The second counter (Total) is the total amount of time spent on the given task. When KTimeclock is exited, the time spent which is saved out to disk will be the time shown in the 'Total' column. As well, as tasks are edited, the total amount of time spent can be changed using the spin boxes shown in the dialog box.

3.3 Creating a new project

To create a new project, select "File | New | Project" from the menu. Ctrl+P is also available as a keyboard shortcut. You will then be presented with a new window asking for the name of the project which you wish to create. Note that all projects created appear at the root level of the tree view.

3.4 Creating a new sub-project

To create a new sub-project, highlight the project/sub-project which you wish to contain the new sub-project and select "File | New | Sub-project" from the menu. Ctrl+S is also available as a keyboard shortcut. You will then be presented with a new window asking for the name of the sub-project which you wish to create. Nesting of sub-projects inside of other sub-projects is supported.

3.5 Creating a new task

To create a new task, highlight the project/sub-project which you wish to contain the new task and select "File | New | Task" from the menu. Ctrl+T is also available as a keyboard shortcut. You will then be presented with a new window asking for the name of the task which you wish to create. If you have already spent some time working on this task, you can use the spinbuttons provided to enter this time.

3.6 Editing a project/task

To edit a project/sub-project/task, highlight the item you wish to edit, and select "Edit | Edit" from the menu. Ctrl+E is also available as a keyboard shortcut. You will then be presented with the same window you were shown when you created the item, and can edit the text or time associated with that item.

3.7 Deleting a project/task

To delete a project/sub-project/task, highlight the item you wish to delete, and select "Edit | Delete" from the menu. Ctrl+D is also available as a keyboard shortcut. You will then be asked to confirm whether or not you wish to delete this item from the project list. Note, that deleting any project will also delete all sub-projects and tasks that the project contains.

3.8 Clearing the time for a single task

To clear the time associated with a specific task, highlight the item that you wish to clear the time for and select "Edit | Clear item" from the menu. Ctrl+C is also available as a keyboard shortcut. Note, that you will not be asked to confirm this action.

3.9 Clearing the time for all tasks

to clear the time associated with all of the tasks in the project list, select the "Edit | Clear all items" from the menu. You will be asked to confirm this action, and then the times for all of the tasks will be cleared and set to zero. This is useful if you keep track of you time on a day-to-day basis and need to reset all of the times at the beginning of each day.

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