430508 - Bugzilla should be able to read and scan physical sheets of paper in a file cabinet

Status: RESOLVED INVALID

(Bugzilla :: Creating/Changing Bugs, enhancement)

Description

[Gervase Markham [:gerv]]

This story:
http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/Halfway-in-the-Digital-Age.aspx
makes an excellent point. Bugzilla needs the capability of "reading and scanning physical sheets of paper in a file cabinet to update issues".

I suggest that every Bugzilla ships with the schematics for a filing robot with built in scanner and OCR/handwriting recognition. I'm sure the Open Hardware guys could help us in putting something together. For bonus points, we should implement putting pieces of paper away as well as taking them out, making the robot a useful general purpose office tool.

This would be a good opportunity for someone to provide value-added Bugzilla services by shipping pre-built robots. Max: would Everything Solves be interested in getting into that business?

Gerv

Comment 1

[Max Kanat-Alexander]

  Oh, I suspect NASA would be highly interested in this functionality. :-)

  Hrm, I'm not sure if ES has enough robot-manufacturing facilities to accomodate the demand. Although they might also have kitsch value if they're 1970's-sci-fi-looking robots, in which case they could be lucratively sold at small shops throughout America and Japan.

Comment 2

[Frédéric Buclin]

Ask marcia to create a Jokes component in the Webtools product, and move this bug there. It will be marked as INVALID/WONTFIX within 24 hours anyway (maybe I don't have the sense of humor).

Comment 3

[Max Kanat-Alexander]

  While we're at it, Bugzilla should also "just do what I told it to" and also "just know what I'm working on." :-)

Comment 4

[Guy Pyrzak]

We're working on this feature, however, our robot resembles a cylon in that you can't tell he is a robot, but he is from canada, so that's a dead givaway.

Comment 5

[Gervase Markham [:gerv]]

Max: I'm sure there's a bug open on Bugzilla "just doing what I mean". Or maybe it's a Firefox bug. I forget. I know ES's manufacturing facilities are somewhat overtaxed with the recent increase in demand from the US army for robots which "only shoot the bad guys".

There are certainly several bugs open on Firefox security, where people think Firefox should read the mind of the web designer to avoid running malicious JavaScript code while allowing the author's code to run. I've always thought that would be fairly mentally taxing for developers on big sites...

LpSolit: There have been many other bugs like this in the past, both for Bugzilla and elsewhere in the project. If it's on your radar and you don't want it to be, change whatever values are necessary (QA Contact?) so that it's not. 

Gerv

Comment 6

[Frédéric Buclin]

(In reply to comment #5)
> LpSolit: There have been many other bugs like this in the past, both for

This doesn't mean there is a need to file new ones in the future. If you really want to play, test landfill.


> Bugzilla and elsewhere in the project. If it's on your radar and you don't want
> it to be, change whatever values are necessary (QA Contact?) so that it's not. 

So funny. So I have to adjust my queries to skip your jokes??? Bye bye! -> INVALID

Comment 7

[Max Kanat-Alexander]

  I think LpSolit is just racist against robots. :-)

Comment 8

[Max Kanat-Alexander]

  Hmm, I think Bugzilla mind-reading capabilities would be more scalable, since it's usually the user's intentions that we're worried about, not the Bugzilla developers'. Of course, reading the user's mind might be a bit trickier, particularly if they don't actually know what they want.

Comment 9

[Gervase Markham [:gerv]]

Filing Bugzilla bugs is an established community mechanism for making jokes. I could provide a dozen examples. If that's not to your taste, don't participate.

Max: that does raise an important question. If the user doesn't actually know what they want, will Bugzilla end up in a state of quantum uncertainty? Do we need to ship all new copies with an installation of Schrodinger's Cat? Perhaps that could be built into the robot...

Gerv

Comment 10

[Reed Loden [:reed]]

This is a perfectly valid feature enhancement. Reopening.

Comment 11

[:glob ✱]

if need be i have many more samples that i could scan.  many more.

Comment 12

[Max Kanat-Alexander]

  Gerv: Yes, perhaps we should actually have a cat-like robot. That would most likely solve all our problems.

  Byron: Sounds like there are customers for the feature! :-D

  CC'ing jjclark--quantum uncertainty will require new search functionality for the robot.

Comment 13

[Frédéric Buclin]

(In reply to comment #10)
> This is a perfectly valid feature enhancement. Reopening.

But a project manager marked it as INVALID. So let it in this state.

Comment 14

[Jesse Clark]

(In reply to comment #12)
> quantum uncertainty will require new search functionality for the robot.

We can use existing search functionality once everything has been assimilated.

However, I expect we will need a PDF engine such as LaTeX to support exporting records to physical sheets of paper in a file cabinet.