org-babel python/shell or gantt charts with gnuplot from within org-mode

[Erik Butz <erik.butz@googlemail.com>]

Hi all,

I have been playing around with org-mode and have been thinking about
the possibility to create gantt charts with org-mode. I did not find
anything in the archives, and todays thread about taskjuggler brought
me back to the subject.

This is a python script hovering around the web (gantt.py) which
enables gant charts with gnuplot. I played around with this a bit so
as to have it accept ISO timestamps (%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%S) and or
durations. Now I am looking for a way to execute this from within
org-mode probably using org-babel

The (bash) syntax would be something like

python gantt.py -t "Title" -i input.txt | gnuplot -persist

I would like to pass an org table to the script instead of the input
file so the equivalent of doing

cat input | python gantt.py -t "Title" | gnuplot -persist

The input structure is (e.g.)

Task 1	2010-4-2T12:00:00	1	validate
Task 2	2010-4-5T12:00:00	5.25	  something
Task 3	2010-4-5T12:00:00	2010-4-10T0:00:00	otherthing
Task 4	5.5			yet another thing
which could well be the column mode representation of a file probably.

I am sorry should this be a bit vague.

Please let me know if I can provide any more information to clarify the problem

Cheers and thanks,

Erik