Gantt diagram - how to start a project a number of days before today?

Question

I would like a Gantt diagram always start certain time before today, for example "project starts two weeks before today". That does not work though, it throws an error. How do I go about this please? Thank you.

Answer 1

We'd like to know a little more about the context (so why do you need this).

If you generate your diagram daily, you will have a different diagram (since "today" is changing daily :-)

It this correct?

It's not exactly your request, but right now you can have:

@startgantt
!$today = %date("YYYY-MM-dd")
Project starts $today
[foo] lasts 10 days
@endgantt

We should probably add some preprocessor function to handle date/time manipulation.

Comments

Thank you for your reply. I have today highlighted in the chart and a task/number of tasks that actually indicate for example how long I keep books from a public library and the end of the task means when I need to return/renew them. The chart is generated daily. As days go by, the whole chart gets ever longer as it has begun on a certain date. However, I do not need to see the whole past to the beginning of the entire book lending period, one/two weeks suffice and the chart image width does not need to grow indefinitely.

So if I could somehow automatically calculate the project start day (perhaps something like "project starts on (%date - 14 days)" that would fulfill the need.

A simplest example for guarding book borrowing periods (but it can/does serve for more advanced uses as well):

@startgantt

footer %filename()

title Books

saturday are closed

sunday are closed

Project starts 2022-07-18

'does not work: Project starts %date("yyyy-MM-dd") - 3 days

'does not work: Project starts 3 days before today

[Books from Local Public Library] starts 2022-07-31 and ends 2022-08-21

[Books from Campus Library] starts 2022-07-21 and ends 2022-08-11

today is colored in lightseagreen

@endgantt

Thank you for any guidance.

---

Thank you for your reply. I have today highlighted in the chart and a task/number of tasks that actually indicate for example how long I keep books from a public library and the end of the task means when I need to return/renew them

This is an unexpected use but definitively a very clever idea :-)

So in last snapshot, we have added a new %now() function which returns the epoch time and %date() is now accepting a second optional argument. So you can use the preprocessor this way:

@startgantt
!$now = %now()
!$past = %date("YYYY-MM-dd", $now - 14*24*3600)
Project starts $past
[foo] lasts 10 days
@endgantt

I think you can now accomplish your goal. Tell us if it works for you!

Do not hesitate to request odd features: I'm sure it will be useful for other users.

---

Thank you for your prompt assistance. It exactly solves the need. This feature can be useful for a range of other timeline related uses, such as tracking medicine/other stocks, personal documents/bank cards validity, travel/accommodation schedules, legal limitation periods etc., using appropriate time scales of course. Thanks once again.