Meet new support forum

We launched a renewed support forum on https://help.ganttproject.biz

Our old home-grown organic forum.ganttproject.biz have been working fine for years requiring almost no maintenance, but time flies and modern forum software provides nice features which had no chances to appear on forum.ganttproject.biz. So, we're running now our own instance of great open-source forum Discourse and it is our default go-to place for support.

Old forum will remain alive for quite a while. It is even in read-write mode now, however it will go read-only soon.

GanttProject 2.8.4: scalable UI on high-density screens and bugfixes

We released GanttProject 2.8.4 which greatly improves UI scalability on high-density devices such as MacBook with Retina screen and Windows Surface Pro.

DPI option in GanttProject settings is now considered in the most major aspects of the user interface, including toolbar buttons and milestones and arrow shapes on the chart. This means that the whole application can be scaled by a simple change of DPI value in the settings.

The absolute majority of the users should be happy with the default value of 96. Those who use high-density displays are advised to set the value to something close to the real DPI of their screens. Values in the range 150-220 shall be good.

We recommend to set Normal size of Application and Base chart fonts and adjust them only for fine tuning. Bigger DPI value and smaller application font size may produce good results in some use cases.

Settings dialog with DPI option

Changing DPI option is safe: it only linearly scales fonts and graphics in GanttProject and doesn't affect operating system or Java Runtime. However, we recommend to restart GanttProject after changing DPI option value.

In unfortunate case when fonts appear so small that it is hard even to change the DPI value, one can edit the settings file manually. The settings file is named .ganttproject (note the leading dot, such files may be hidden by the operating system) and it sits in the user home folder. It is a text file which can be edited in any text editor. Adding this line between any other option tags will set DPI to 120:

<option id="ui.screenDpi" value="120"/>
 
You need to close all GanttProject windows before editing the settings file.

Besides the scalability, GanttProject 2.8.4 fixes a few bugs and gets back iCal import plugin.

---

Download GanttProject from the official web site

Follow GanttProject on Twitter and Facebook.

---

Troubleshooting MS Project import: shifted dates

This page describes possible reasons of task dates change after import from MS Project file.

While we do our best to import MS Project files as is, you may notice that after import some of the tasks change their dates. The reason is that Microsoft Project and GanttProject are different applications with different features and different behavior. If you see a warning saying that some of the tasks changed their dates, you may use the list below as a guide to fixing this issue. We recommend to start from the earliest task because it might turn out the cause of changes in the whole subsequent chain.

So, why a task may change the dates after import:

1. In the original MS Project file it starts on weekend day and you import it into a project with non-working weekends. In this case you need to choose "replace existing calendar" option in the importer or import into project with working weekends
2. In the original MS Project file tasks have dependency with a lag. GanttProject by default makes the project as short as possible and when it can remove the lag, it will. In this case you need to set default dependency hardness to "Rubber" in the Gantt chart settings before you import a project.
3. In the original MS Project file tasks have duration less than 1 day and/or task starts on the same day when its predecessor ends. GanttProject's duration granularity is 1 day, and it assumes that task starts in the morning and finishes in the evening, so it is impossible for successor to start at the same day when predecessor finishes. You can set a negative lag in the dependency properties to fix it for the given pair of tasks, but GanttProject won't do it automatically during the import
4. Microsoft Project is known to be somewhat forgiving with respect to dependencies, and it is possible that task with e.g. Finish-Start dependency on its predecessor actually starts earlier than predecessor finishes in the original file. GanttProject is more strict and enforces the constraint.

You may also find useful our docs on the scheduling algorithm in GanttProject.

GanttProject 2.8.3: how to get back ical import

Update: this bug is fixed in GanttProject 2.8.4

Due to a bug in the application configuration import from iCal is missing in GanttProject 2.8.2 and GanttProject 2.8.3. If you want to get it back, do the following (applies to 2.8.3):

1. Open file  plugins-2.8.3/biz.ganttproject.impex.ical/plugin.xml
   from your GanttProject 2.8.3 installation in any text editor (you may need Administrator/root priveleges for that)
2. At line 9 replace ganttproject-ical.jar with biz.ganttproject.impex.ical.jar  
3. Save the file and restart GanttProject

On Mac OSX the file sits in /Applications/GanttProject.app/Contents/Java/plugins-2.8.3/biz.ganttproject.impex.ical/ provided that GanttProject is installed in Applications

Sorry for this issue! We'll fix the distributions in the next update.

GanttProject 2.8.3: severe bugfixes

We just've published a new maintenance update. This should solve annoying misaligned rows problem and a number of other severe issues.

Also, there is a new option for setting screen DPI density. The default value of 96 should be fine for most of the users, however, those who are suffering from tiny fonts on their shiny high-density screens may want to set the appropriate value (200-400), restart GanttProject and get fonts scaled. At the moment this option affects only fonts, not icons or chart graphics, sorry.

Setting dialog with the new DPI option

Download GanttProject 2.8.3 from the official web site.

UPD:
Troubleshooting: how to get back iCal import
Oh, wait! You can now like and follow GanttProject on Facebook!