Style Preference: NoHandleStyle?

[Greg Jones]

I'm not sure when the NoHandleStyle option appeared under Style-Based Styles in the Styles Preferences, and I can't tell where it is applied. Anyone know what this preference does?

[whpalmer4]

1.8 sneakypeek, and it styles the projects/action groups in context mode...the name is a bit of a puzzler to me!

[Greg Jones]

Thanks Bill! I'm also curious if, with the 1.8SP, you can change the color of projects in 'Main Outline>Projects'? The default is a dark gray, and I can't get any changes to stick. Installing a custom theme saved with a different projects color gets changed to gray also. I've sent an email to the Ninjas, but was wondering if anyone else sees the same behavior.

[whpalmer4]

Greg, I hadn't really experimented with that (I run with pretty much the stock style settings) but playing around with it just now, I noticed that the Main Outline>Project color settings affects only Single Action Lists, not normal Projects. In 1.7.5, it affects both. The 1.7.5 behavior seems to be the correct one, in my opinion. There might still be the odd bug or two in the 1.8 sneaky peek :-)

[Brian]

Checked the bug database - looks like there's a bug filed against the sneakypeek that would cover this problem. Added a note on this. Thanks!

[Greg Jones]

The latest 1.8 SP (April 19, #...0893) does give some color changes to projects, but I cannot understand the what and why of the colors. In Project mode, all but one of my projects now have the color, but not the font/style, assigned to NoHandleStyle. The lone project that is showing the font/style/color that I have assigned to Main Outline>Projects is a SAL.

[jasong]

Yep, looks like nohandlestyle applies to every project in my list, making my other styles useless.

What is this style supposed to represent?

[jasong]

Hm. No one knows what this style means, even the ninjas?

It's very confusing.

Best I can guess:

* Under Projects, Projects with actions in them take on this style, and Projects no actions in them take on the style of "Next Actions".

* Under Contexts, Projects with no actions in them take on this style.

That means this "nohandlestyle" has two different meanings, depending on which view you're in.

Like I said: very confusing.

Can a ninja step in and give an explanation of this style?

[Greg Jones]

I submitted this as a bug report on 4/21 and the ninja that responded did not know what the style means. I was asked for screen shots to illustrate, which I submitted. That's the last I have heard about the problem.

The styles and how they are applied are now so broken that, at least to me, they are useless. As mentioned, the styles can have different meaning depending on what view the user is in. The bigger problem that I see is that styles are stacked, creating a totally new style in the process. As example, look at the Project View pictured below and the Styles preference pane to the right. The only project to get the formatting for projects, and only projects, is a SAL with no tasks. Every other project is a combination of styles pulled from Project, Next Action, and NoHandleStyle. As a specific example, the last two projects in the list (Project with no task and (no)context) has the 'Bold' and 'Underline' attributes from Projects and the 'Font' and 'Color' from Next Actions.

http://grab.by/grabs/af615534f7204b232ca715c55fc171d8.png


Now switching to context view, we can see how a project appears different. The 'Project with no task and no context' now has the 'Font' and 'Underline' attributes from Projects and the 'Color' and 'Italic' style attributes from NoHandleStyle. Notice also that the project with a task has a solid bar background, while the project with no task has a rounded bar background.
http://grab.by/grabs/bddc40a1c6ad910952c3b8d8204b2657.png


How is the user expected to make sense of how styles are applied when the ninjas apparently are not understanding them either?

[Ken Case]

The NoHandleStyle was an accident. It's removed in the next sneaky peek.

(Also, the next sneaky peek will stop trying to apply the "next action" style to projects.)

[Greg Jones]

Looks great Ken-thanks!