(Partial) OpenMeta support in OmniFocus – great or stinkin’?
 

Hi there,

I sent the e-mail below regularly, using the feedback function in OF. It was just a blurb occupying my brains, so, yeah. You get the idea.

I was quite surprised when I received an answer inside one hour from the Ninjas, asking whether other people feel like this? Hence this thread.

Here’s my rambling:

[quote=Remember, it’s already night here where I live, so mind the language]Hi there,

are there any plans or wild ideas in the heads of the Omni people about OpenMeta support in OmniFocus? If not so, let me put this meme into your brains right now.

The way I see it, OpenMeta would enable OF to interact seamlessly with loads of info on a current Mac. Say, e-mails. Right now, MailTags support is in it to automatically fill in Projects and the like when adding a message to OF via the short-cut. But some People rather prefer „Tags“ to, well, tag stuff on their Mac, including e-mail. Anyway, MailTags will soon support OpenMeta anyway ...

„Leap“ and others will follow suit, too. Just imagine having ONE keyword for a whole project, and you can access everything from e-mail to materials to bills to OF tasks via this one keyword.

This is NOT one of those requests blurting about “give us TAGS NOW OR I’LL BUY THINGS!!!111+”. Actually, I’m not interested in general purpose tags in OF at all (it would play havoc with my GTD system). But interaction between applications is what makes Macs great for me. So, rather than developing loads of plugins for all possible kind of imports as you do now, why not put your money on OpenMeta and cover a potential plethora of them?

Yes, I am aware that OpenMeta is not Apple approved, actually a hack, and might die quicker than a roadrunner hitting a wall. All it takes is Apple to say NO WAY in Snow Leopard, remove xattr, and it might become difficult. But as the source code is open source, with no commercial restrictions in the license, perhaps as one additional plug-in to OmniFocus?

Just some thoughts I blurted out. Into my OF Inbox, I may add. Really handy software you guys made, worth every penny.

Cheers from Lower Saxony,
-Sascha[/quote]

Derek asked others who feel similar about this thingy to use the Send Feedback function, too. So, yeah.

What do you think?

Cheers,
-Sascha

OpenMeta seems all well and good. But OmniFocus doesn't yet support tags, so at the current moment, I don't really see the point?

Maybe if 1.6 comes out and there's great tagging support but I'm sorta seeing a bit of an impedance mismatch at the mo' yeah?

tags tags tags
 

I personally would be very keen to see openmeta tags in OF. I keep looking longingly at Things because it DOES have tags, and then come back to OF each time.

If/when tags are to be introduced then open meta would be very neat way to go (leaving aside the whole "is it safe" discussion).

One universal generic tag system would be a spectacularly powerful organisational tool, and openmeta is the best game in town.

Apart from the hack thingy, and OF lacking tags (right now?), the one thing I would love OpenMeta for right now is:

Tag documents with your customer’s name, and project, and “context”, use the same keywords in OF, and ey presto, ALL your stuff in one place when using the future versions of [I]Leap[/I] or other tagging applications. [I]Including[/I] OF tasks.

Right now, we have MailTags integration, so if I hit the quick entry key on a tagged mail message, the Project is filled in already. Handy. I would like to see this go further, say for documents I tagged in the finder and add them to a task.

The PM of OmniFocus asked me through the ninjas for further information how I would see an implementation working. Unfortunately, my wife died only on Friday, so I simply don’t have the time or energy for this right now. So if you guys have some ideas how you would like to see this implemented in OF, please drop the Ninjas a line. I will do so later.

Cheers,
-Sascha

Count me in on OpenMeta tags. I too would like the ability to link items from several different programs, and OpenMeta seems to be the best game in town at the moment. Really, all I need is for OpenMeta to be able to "read" (if that's the right word) the project and context as tags, so that if I search for "tag:[projectname]" I will see the OF tasks along side any other items, such as email, documents, etc.

This would be a big help to me in my quest to ba able to link all the items in a project, and seems to me like it would be pretty easy to implement.

Please, Omnigroup?

My “use cases” and implementation ideas went out to the Ninjas a moment ago. I suggest you guys do the same, if you’re interested in it. :)

Cheers,
-Sascha

As long as it can be disabled in Preferences, I'd be fine with it. Having used Things, Tags & Together for some time I've ended up reversing out completely and using Path Finder and an improved structure for my file system. IMO, extended usage of tags can create its' own problems in terms of additional management of data. Also, isn't OpenMeta still lacking support from Apple? I know there was a debate a while back about whether it was a 'hack'?

Snow Leopard
 

Does anyone know if better tagging is going to be implemented in Snow Leopard? I have read a number of different rumors, including a (much needed, IMHO) upgrade to the Finder. This would certainly impact OF, OpenMeta, etc. Just curious.

[QUOTE=wdiadamo;56377]Does anyone know if better tagging is going to be implemented in Snow Leopard?[/QUOTE]

I don't think anyone really [I]knows[/I] except the OS X developers at Apple. And anyone with reliable inside information is likely going to keep it to themselves.

Having said that, though, I would be very surprised if the OS X team at Apple hadn't at least considered the idea. So who knows? Personally, I don't think we'll see it in Snow Leopard, but maybe 10.7.

As for OpenMeta, this thread puts wide developer acceptance in question. It's not clear if important design issues are being addressed.

[URL="http://ironicsoftware.com/community/comments.php?DiscussionID=632&page=1#Item_0"]OpenMeta Is a Hack[/URL]

-Dennis

[QUOTE=Toadling;56484]I don't think anyone really [I]knows[/I] except the OS X developers at Apple. And anyone with reliable inside information is likely going to keep it to themselves.

Having said that, though, I would be very surprised if the OS X team at Apple hadn't at least considered the idea. So who knows? Personally, I don't think we'll see it in Snow Leopard, but maybe 10.7.

As for OpenMeta, this thread puts wide developer acceptance in question. It's not clear if important design issues are being addressed.

-Dennis[/QUOTE]
Just a note: The developer of Default Folder X is fully supporting OpenMeta and posted a lengthy monologue on his reasons why at this link: [url]http://ironicsoftware.com/community/comments.php?DiscussionID=755&page=1#Item_19[/url]

We have been waiting for a solution to this problem for a long time and now was the time for us to do [b]something[/b]. We are building a robust, stable, and application-independent system for [b]every developer[/b] to be able to use. We look forward to any participation from the awesome folks at OmniGroup if they decide to support this initiative.

Cheers!

Tags...yes...tags...yes...

T..a...g...s..is the best

I'd like to also add my voice to the throng clamoring for OpenMeta support. If you're unfamiliar with it, please check out the link in Bullfrog's post above. It's a very clear and thorough examination of what OpenMeta is, what it purports to do, and what the potential problems are.

And to the original poster, my condolences on your loss.

Anyone playing with openmeta tags?
 

I'm just starting to explore Tagoman, which is an interface for adding, editing, and exploring openmeta tags. [url]http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/31270/tagoman[/url]
Looks very promising as a way to group files associated with a project together: I can simply put "tag://projectname" somewhere in OF (say, in the comment field of the project) and it will turn clickable. A click on it will bring up a little window listing all the files I have previously tagged with "projectname" (and allow me to add more). Looks like mail messages and other things can be tagged, too.

Has anyone else looked at integrating Tagoman or other openmeta managers into your OmniFocus workflow?

EDIT: I see now that openmeta has been addressed before: [url]http://forums.omnigroup.com/showthread.php?t=11233[/url]

merged new thread with existing.

I would love to assign a tag to a project and have the ability to bring up a finder window of reference materials and documents relating to that project with just one click.

This is just what Tagoman looks like it can do.
I've attached a bit of a screenshot.
By clicking on the "tag://apha10" that I've typed into the comment field of the project, Tagoman opens the window that shows three things I've previously attached the "apha10" tag to: a folder, a scrivener file, and an email message.

EDIT: I should add that that little window can also be drag-and-dropped-into, so it works well to build a collection of related files as well as to retrieve them.

Turns out you can send a smart folder to the notes field. Would be interesting to see tighter integration.

How do people feel about having the ability to populate the notes field with spotlight search terms? This way a project for a wedding can have a note that when expanded shows a live list of all the files tagged "wedding". Sort of like integrating smart folders inside the project notes

Expanding on that idea...how about having that functionality in a separate "reference" button next to notes, allowing you the option of having notes and reference material separate.

[QUOTE=Young Daniel;75078]How do people feel about having the ability to populate the notes field with spotlight search terms? This way a project for a wedding can have a note that when expanded shows a live list of all the files tagged "wedding". Sort of like integrating smart folders inside the project notes

Expanding on that idea...how about having that functionality in a separate "reference" button next to notes, allowing you the option of having notes and reference material separate.[/QUOTE]

I feel that being able to have reference material related to an OF entry is key. I may have files, appointments, calendar entries, etc., and being able to view all those/have access to them would be very helpful.

I am finding that this can be currently achievable using TagoMan. If I have a tag that I use to organize information called "tagname", entering the tag as tag://[tagname] brings up a TagoMan window that has all the items that are aggregated under the tag.

I am curious whether there is a way to easily invoke external applications with specific parameters - I am thinking of opening a Finder smartfolder that has all my items.

[QUOTE=imlad;86720]
I am finding that this can be currently achievable using TagoMan. If I have a tag that I use to organize information called "tagname", entering the tag as tag://[tagname] brings up a TagoMan window that has all the items that are aggregated under the tag.

I am curious whether there is a way to easily invoke external applications with specific parameters - I am thinking of opening a Finder smartfolder that has all my items.[/QUOTE]
I don't know if you're trying to open the Finder smartfolder from TagoMan or from OF, but it maybe doesn't matter. I did some experimentation just now and while I was able to get a working file:// URL to the Saved Searches folder to work, I was not able to get one step past that to actually open the smart folder directly.

I also tried making a little Applescript file that invoked the saved search, and while I was able to get that to work, I wasn't able to get OmniFocus to actually execute the script from a link, only open its home in the Finder.

[code]
tell application "Finder"
open file (POSIX file "/Users/oftest/Desktop/Test.savedSearch")
end tell
[/code]

You could have a file URL for the Applescript file in OF which would at least take you to that search file, then double-click to get the window full of matches. Better than nothing?

I thought I posted this the other day, but it doesn't seem to have shown up. I assume I haven't violated any forum rules in some way — at least, no one notified me that I have.

Anyway, I was working on some of the same issues not long ago, and since I have a license for HoudahSpot, I decided to adapt Jim Harrison's Project Notes AppleScript to create a HoudahSpot saved search file for the selected project. The script checks to see if a Finder folder hierarchy corresponding to the OmniFocus folder hierarchy containing the project exists and creates one if it doesn't. If the hierarchy already existed, it looks for a saved search file in the proper location; if it's not found, the script creates one and adds its URL to the project's Notes field. The saved search finds files with an OpenMeta tag equal to the name of the project. Of course you'll still need a way to apply the tag to the project files, but you can do that in HoudahSpot too.

File tagging?
 

I don't get how this would work - would it simply be a clone of Things' tags? In that case I think it'd be superfluous. I like OF because it specialises in a particular group of methods. I don't want it to become a generalist.

Using OF for File Management, however, is very exciting. I already use it extensively for managing text files (migrated from Notational Velocity).

A quick hack - I use OpenMeta tags in Ironic's Leap software. I then save Spotlight searches, i.e., "tag:sometag AND tag:someothertag" which I can then drag into OF tasks / projects.

[QUOTE=eurobubba;86811]I thought I posted this the other day, but it doesn't seem to have shown up. I assume I haven't violated any forum rules in some way — at least, no one notified me that I have.[/QUOTE]

Just to reassure you, it doesn't look like any of the admins took any action here - if a post is blocked or deleted, we can see that in the admin interface. No indication of that in this thread.

[QUOTE=Brian;86873]Just to reassure you, it doesn't look like any of the admins took any action here - if a post is blocked or deleted, we can see that in the admin interface. No indication of that in this thread.[/QUOTE]

Thanks — turns out I posted it in the "AppleScripting Omni Apps" forum, not any of the OF forums.