Date Parsing: Natural Language, Relative Date Options
 

The entering of dates using natural languages is something we've worked on hard for the release of OmniFocus. The ability to quickly enter a date using both exact and inexact notation to get a meaningful date is very important to being able to both trust your system, and record your thoughts and tasks quickly and intuitively. In addition to supporting some common natural language terminology we've also added some very powerful shorthand notation to allow you to be precise relative to the current day.

In OmniFocus you have dates in 2 different places, columns in the main view:
[img]http://people.omnigroup.com/xmas/blog/start_due_content.png[/img]
And in the date section of the inspectors:
[img]http://people.omnigroup.com/xmas/blog/dates_inspector.png[/img]

Clicking on a calender icon:
[img]http://people.omnigroup.com/xmas/blog/dates_inspector_highlight.png[/img]
in any of these fields will pop open the system calendar widget. There is some difference in this action for 10.4 vs 10.5, and we'll fix some of the issue that we don't like with this widget in an upcoming OmniFocus release.


However, this document details text-only entry.

Lets say you have something due tomorrow, so you type "tomorrrow". Well, now lets say you have something due in 2 days... there isn't really a word for that. Lucky for you though you can use a shorthand notation and type in "2d", and you'll get 2 days from now. Keep in mind that this will return an actual date, NOT a duration (unlike the column that has the little clock icon in it).

In general we try to pick the most conservative estimate, so that at worst you'll see something overdue sooner than later, and can deal with it as needed.

You can use any combination that matches the folllowing:

[(+)/-][#][hdmwy]

(Hour, Month, Day, Week, Year only supported, minutes are not supported in this format.)

Examples:

2w - 2 weeks
-1d - yesterday
1m - next month
-1y - last year
1d1w - a day and a week

Recent changes to how we handle "this/next/last/[no modfier]" for weekday names is show in this diagram:
[img]http://people.omnigroup.com/xmas/blog/this_next_last_no.png[/img]

You can also use common names:

[day name]
[month name]
['][2 digit year]
[4 digit year]
[day of month]

And any of these can be used in any order, and with abbreviations

Examples:
march - next march
tuesday - next tuesday
march 2001 - march 2001
sept '05 - september 2005

Or you can use a short date format:

5/23/79
5-23-79
5.23.79

In the form:
[day]/[month]/[year] (or month/day/year if your system pref is set to that)

(We look at your system date format and determine the order of your month/day/year, so if you're seeing something odd, look at what your date format is.)

And you can do times:

[hour]:[minute]:[second](am/pm)
[hour]:[minute](am/pm)
[hour][am/pm]

(or just "a" or "p")

As an added bonus, mix and match.

Examples:

2w sat
4d @ 5p
tues 6a
aug 6 tues 5p

It should be fairly predictable, and I'd love to hear the feedback you have. If you have feed back either post here (will probably be read in a timely fashion) or send it in using Send Feedback (will be read in a timely fashion). And please include what you typed, what you expected, and your date format.

(date format found by going to: System Prefs -> International -> Formats, then click "customize", and copy and paste the blue lozenges. You should get something like "d/MM/yy".)

[QUOTE=xmas]Examples:

2w - 2 weeks
1m - next month
-1y - last year
1d1w - a day and a week[/QUOTE]

Does 1m mean "next month" (first of June) or "one month from now" (22nd of June)? Does -1y mean "last year" any date, or "one year ago" (May 22, 2006)?

"one month from now"(22nd of June) and "one year ago"(may 22, 2006)

Wow! Well done! I'll give it a more thorough testing when my brain is not fried.

Any idea how soon "start" dates will be taken into account when deciding whether a project or task is "available"? It would help me immensely if the "available" filter, at least in context view, excluded tasks whose time has not yet come.

[QUOTE=brianogilvie]Wow! Well done! I'll give it a more thorough testing when my brain is not fried.

Any idea how soon "start" dates will be taken into account when deciding whether a project or task is "available"? It would help me immensely if the "available" filter, at least in context view, excluded tasks whose time has not yet come.[/QUOTE]

It's under discussion now. (Ambiguous noises about when it will ready)

My main reason for not testing this in force is the lack of recurring actions...

I'm only noodling around in OF, because I use another system with around 2k items. I don't want to do the double work of entering in two different systems and hoping that they match. The main function that keeps me from moving into OF is the recurring task. Once that is in... look out.

I'm just 1 hr into the alpha test, so I haven't tested this out yet very thoroughly. I do remember, though, that the similar functionality in kGTD had this problem: If in System Preferences, under International -> Format, I changed the region to something other than US (specifically Romanian, haven't tested others), the smart date recognition stopped working.

I changed it back to US, becuase iCal has some issues with showing the weekday name in that situation as well, but maybe you'll want to keep this in mind.

[QUOTE=smew]I'm just 1 hr into the alpha test, so I haven't tested this out yet very thoroughly. I do remember, though, that the similar functionality in kGTD had this problem: If in System Preferences, under International -> Format, I changed the region to something other than US (specifically Romanian, haven't tested others), the smart date recognition stopped working.

I changed it back to US, becuase iCal has some issues with showing the weekday name in that situation as well, but maybe you'll want to keep this in mind.[/QUOTE]

if you can let me know the ICU date format that you want to use, or just a sample date, I'll add it to the test suite.

[QUOTE=xmas]It's under discussion now. (Ambiguous noises about when it will ready)[/QUOTE]

That's lovely, but the whole point of start dates is that tasks which haven't started yet don't appear in contexts. This one's a no-brainer, guys.

[QUOTE=Athanasius]That's lovely, but the whole point of start dates is that tasks which haven't started yet don't appear in contexts. This one's a no-brainer, guys.[/QUOTE]

Oh, absolutely—no question! Hiding tasks which start in the future has always been planned, because yes, that is the whole point of assigning start dates.

The only reason it hasn't been done yet is that the we're working on start date propagation first, so that setting a start date on a project effectively sets that start date for all its tasks and setting a start date on a task in a sequential project effectively sets it to all subsequent tasks (unless they have a start date of their own).

missing something? bug?
 

i'm perhaps doing something wrong? when i enter into the field with the little clock next to it, as xmas says above, 'tomorrow' or '2d' or '5/25/07' (without quotes of course), nothing (right) happens.

entering any of these and hitting return of course gives me a new line and putroubleshoot nothing in the field.

entering any of these and hitting tab shows me '1m' - but it's not 1 month, it's two days from now.

did i misread something? is this a bug?

thanks.

Yes... that is the Estimated time for the task. There, you would enter: 10m or 3h or so. "Tomorrow" is not an estimated time, so it's definitely not going to be recognized as one.

you are suggesting that that field is just to show an estimated due date? can't be, cuz when i put in 5/25/07 (two days from now), it says 1m. the actual date for the project is now gone, it's not there when i look in inspector. and in any case 1m as an estimate for a date that is day after tomorrow doesn't make sense.

sorry, still confused.

In the current alphas, the field with a clock in it is for "duration", so it's your guess on how long a task will take. This is something like "5 minutes" or "3 hours". It is NOT an absolute date, like "May 23rd".

What I'm talking about in this thread is referring to the Start/Due/Completed dates found in the inspector, which are absolute dates.

Sorry I wasn't clear - it's the estimated time necessary to complete the task - as in "it takes me 1 minute to make this phonecall" or "it takes me 4 hours to write this paper" or "it takes me 1 lifetime to get organized" :D

I have no idea how it figures 1 minute from 5/25/07, though, and it certainly shouldn't empty your due date! (which it does for me, too - *confirmed bug*)

wow. thank you SO much for clarifying that. now that i understand there's now column for a due date, it makes sense.

um... i see you say it on the intro:

"You'll be able to add columns to the outline for due and start dates"

thanks!

Another clarification for our international users:

If your system dates are formatted like: "May 23 1979", then a formatted input assumes that you'll enter dates in the same order. So my date format is Month-Day-Year, which means if I enter "5-23-79" or "5/23/79" or "5.23.79" its going to be parsed in that month-day-year order.

If you were to enter "2007-12-31" and your date format was "May 23 1979" then we'd get confused (currently, working on adding some more robustness). (but some dates like 1-1-1, I have to pick something, so we default to your system prefs)

But if you change your system date format (*really, your system short date format) to how you expect to enter dates, you should have more success. You can do this in the SystemPrefs>International>Format pane.

[QUOTE=smew]Sorry I wasn't clear - it's the estimated time necessary to complete the task - as in "it takes me 1 minute to make this phonecall" or "it takes me 4 hours to write this paper" or "it takes me 1 lifetime to get organized" :D

I have no idea how it figures 1 minute from 5/25/07, though, and it certainly shouldn't empty your due date! (which it does for me, too - *confirmed bug*)[/QUOTE]

It clears the date you have in the inspector for due date? Or you just get a unexpected duration?

when i put a value in and hit tab it gives the unexpected duration. when i hit RETURN, it clears the field and gives me a new blank line.

[QUOTE=fogboy]when i put a value in and hit tab it gives the unexpected duration. when i hit RETURN, it clears the field and gives me a new blank line.[/QUOTE]

I think that's working correctly. If you put something in the duration field that we can't parse as a duration, then it will return nothing, and pressing enter always makes a new line (unless you have a completion table open).

If this is not working how you expect, send a bug using the Send Feedback tool.

Sorry; yes, this is working properly.

Question on time entry: can I enter times in 24 hour mode?

My system is set to 24, but in many programs I can't enter 1630 for a time ... I'm forced to enter 4:30p. I would like to be able to use 24 hour time in OF.

And I'll test out the dates as soon as Object Meter is back off ... OF crawls so much when it is on that I do only the minimum work.

Eagerly awaiting the next batch of new features ...

--Liz

[QUOTE=LizPf]Question on time entry: can I enter times in 24 hour mode?

My system is set to 24, but in many programs I can't enter 1630 for a time ... I'm forced to enter 4:30p. I would like to be able to use 24 hour time in OF.
[/QUOTE]

I've had some trouble getting "true" 24 hour time to work, mainly since times like "2004" or "2007" look eerily similar to the years "2004" and "2007" respectively. You can currently however enter "16:30".

When you say your system is set to 24, does that mean that your times show up as "1630"? If so, it would be easy to allow people who have their times set to that configuration to default to taking numbers between 0 and 2400 as times, and numbers over 2400 as years.

Also, thanks to users who pointed out that "2007-05-04" is an ICO standard and will always be year-month-day when dashes are used, this will be updated in one of today's builds.

OF accepts "m" for "month" in the date fields but "m" is used for "minute" in the duration field.

I am an oddball that refers to dates by YYDDD, for instance, today is 07158. In OS X, you actually set up the system to refer to dates this way, and OF will display them correctly, but I cannot type them in that way. I have to specify the month in there. Bah, months. :)

[QUOTE=AmberV]I am an oddball that refers to dates by YYDDD, for instance, today is 07158. In OS X, you actually set up the system to refer to dates this way, and OF will display them correctly, but I cannot type them in that way. I have to specify the month in there. Bah, months. :)[/QUOTE]

is your short and medium dates set to YYDDD?

if not, try setting your short date format to YYDDMM or something, just so that the order in the short date format is year-day-month.

Yeah, I've got short date set to YYDDD, that is how it always has been. I tried setting medium to YYDDD as well (normally I have that set to ISO), and nothing changed. It seems to convert whatever I type into some really bizarre date. 07177 comes out as 77158. So evidently the day '07' is coming through, as well as the year '77' (though backwards of course). Not sure how it is deriving this month out of the remaining '1'.

"today" defaults to 12MN (as do all the date calcs) but I was wondering if you should support "now" or "current" for a up-to-the-minute time/date stamp.

Jeffrey

Also do you think that if you enter a date calc such as

"t+2", the units should default to days, not hours?

(although it's certainly correct for simply typing in "+2" for 2 hours from now

[QUOTE=Kane]"today" defaults to 12MN (as do all the date calcs) but I was wondering if you should support "now" or "current" for a up-to-the-minute time/date stamp.

Jeffrey[/QUOTE]

this will be added in a future release.

Would autocompletion help as you enter the shorthand?
eg. type 1, get a popup (like for contexts), select day, week etc.

Id also like to see less granular time/date options or "buckets" (as per [url]http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/302-preview-5-highrise-tasks[/url])

I would like to point out that although this thread is full of ideas to improve this feature... this feature along is totatlly awesome. I'm allready typing "2w" into other apps and I'm really annoyed that they don't parse it the was OF does. I'm sure it will still be tweaked, but great job Omni. Whoever concepted this one deserves a raise.

I would like to see the shortcut 'tom' work for tomorrow. As it is now, it seems that 'tom' is parsed as 'today'.

Also, the Dot in the middle of the calendar at the top, between the left and right arrows does not seem to jump back to today's date.

Another vote for "tom."

[QUOTE=Janice]Another vote for "tom."[/QUOTE]

And another.

When I worked at an answering service (taking hundreds of msgs per day), the canonical abbreviation was "TMO", not "TOM".

Am I overlooking something or is there no keyboard shortcut that will move the insertion point to the date field in the inspector? Very often, focus (with or without an insertion point) will be on a task in the main window, and I will want to add a date or dates (start or due or both) to it, but so far the only way I've found is to actually click in the inspector. And the less clicking the better.

(N.B. I think having start and due date columns in the main window, reachable by tabbing, is not a solution; I'm seeing are too many columns there already.)

Hi
At the moment the start or due date field contains the coresponding date written in numbers. Will there be the possibility to have, for example, today/tomorrow or whatever in this field displayed instead of the date in number format?

Thanks
Ivan

[QUOTE=xmas;13870]
Or you can use a short date format:

5/23/79
5-23-79
5.23.79

In the form:
[day]/[month]/[year] (or month/day/year if your system pref is set to that)
[/QUOTE]

Hello,
with the current version, it seems the format dd/mm/yy does not work when entering dates in the inspector fields.
When I enter 07/10/07, I get : "7 oct. 07 00:00"
when I enter 01/01/07, I get : "7 janv. 07 00:00"
when I enter 10/10/10, I get : "7 oct. 07 00:00"

I tried this on the due date field.
It works fine in the due date column in the main window.

I also would reeeeaaallllly like a date display close to what iGTD does : that is "tomorrow" instead of 03/10/07. This is much more relevant... when you don't really know what is the date today ! You know this task is due tomorrow !
Also, it would be nice to have some clue about due dates being late. Like a read background, or something like that.
I know... i'm not supposed to be late, but hey, weird things happen !

Thanks for the good work on this great piece of software.

[QUOTE=subotic;21823]Hi
Will there be the possibility to have, for example, today/tomorrow or whatever in this field displayed instead of the date in number format?[/QUOTE]

That would be great ! I miss this feature from iGTD.
+1 !!!

Time zone entry
 

I live in Japan but do business mostly with people in the United States. Ideally I would like due times to relate to U.S. time (Pacific/Eastern/whatever). For instance, if I want to give someone through Wednesday their time to get back to me and contact them Thursday morning their time if they don't, I'd want to input a due date/time of, say, Thursday 9:00 a.m. EDT.

I wonder if this could be accommodated in OF? Maybe something that takes timezone abbreviations or even just UTC/GMT offsets (I can remember those if I need to).

So:

-- thu 9 a edt

-- thu 9 a utc-6

-- thu 9 a gmt+6

I suppose that the Mac is smart enough to know whether it's est/edt, so maybe those could be synonomous.

Another idea: reasonable interpretations of morning, afternoon, etc. Perhaps the precise times could be set in Preferences.

Feature request: Due date relative to start date and vice versa
 

There really is an awesome amount of 'interesting things' for entering start or due dates - I like them.
But I'm missing the possibility to enter the due date of a task/project related to the start date and vice versa.

Examples:

I have a task/project with a start date 10/20/07 and an estimated time to complete it of 5 days. So I'd like to enter:
"10/20/07" in the start date column
"+5" in the due date column
resulting due date: 10/25/07.

Or, I have a task project with a due date 10/20/07 and I think I'll need 5 days to complete it. So I would enter:
"10/20/07" in the due date column
"-5" in the start date column
resulting start date: 10/15/07.

For me this feature would much improve planning dates of tasks/projects.

Future Due Dates Cause Projects To Disappear
 

Hopefully someone can explain to me what I am doing wrong. Whenever I sent a due date for a specific project that is in the future, the entire project immediately disappears and to this point there is nothing I can do to find the project unless I undo that action. Has anyone else had this problem? Are we not supposed to be able to set project dates in the future?

[QUOTE=Maluktuk;23142]Hopefully someone can explain to me what I am doing wrong. Whenever I sent a due date for a specific project that is in the future, the entire project immediately disappears and to this point there is nothing I can do to find the project unless I undo that action. Has anyone else had this problem? Are we not supposed to be able to set project dates in the future?[/QUOTE]

I can't replicate the problem. Please post your view bar settings.

Now I Feel Stupid...
 

[QUOTE=dhm2006;23152]I can't replicate the problem. Please post your view bar settings.[/QUOTE]

I felt like I had played with all the view settings possible, but your question made me go back and see that there is a filter for the projects in the left sidebar as well that I hadn't realized before. I changed the view from "Active" to "All Projects" and there were my projects.

Sorry for posting such a silly question, but sincere thanks for your help.

Setting the Due date shouldn't cause the project to disappear from Active Projects. Setting a [I]Start[/I] date in the future would move the project from the Active list to the Pending list. That's a very handy feature when you are over-committed and negotiate to delay some project. When the new start date is reached, the project appears in your Active Project view.

How to Sort by Due Date?
 

How can I sort by Due Date and only show actions that have a Due Date?

thanks....

[QUOTE=mlondon;23282]How can I sort by Due Date and only show actions that have a Due Date?[/QUOTE]

The short answer is that you can't. What I do is this: In context view, group by due date and sort by due date, and then ignore the group that says "None" at the bottom of the list.

To show only actions that have a due date, you would have to be able to *filter* by due date, and you can't. You can *group* by due date, and you can *sort* by due date, but you cannot *filter* by due date. Grouping puts similar items together. Sorting put items in a particular sequence. Filtering selects items out (or in, depending on how you look at it).

In context view, you can show actions in date order by grouping by due date and sorting however you want OR you can ungroup and sort by due date. If you group by something else, then sort by due date, OF groups first and then sorts, which is nice, but probably not what you want.

thank you...

seems this would be a totally useful feature.

ie: Show my everything that is due now (or passed due) grouped by context....

[QUOTE=uku;22795]There really is an awesome amount of 'interesting things' for entering start or due dates - I like them.
But I'm missing the possibility to enter the due date of a task/project related to the start date and vice versa.

Examples:

I have a task/project with a start date 10/20/07 and an estimated time to complete it of 5 days. So I'd like to enter:
"10/20/07" in the start date column
"+5" in the due date column
resulting due date: 10/25/07.

Or, I have a task project with a due date 10/20/07 and I think I'll need 5 days to complete it. So I would enter:
"10/20/07" in the due date column
"-5" in the start date column
resulting start date: 10/15/07.

For me this feature would much improve planning dates of tasks/projects.[/QUOTE]

I've thought about this, it might turn up someday as "start+5"/"S+5"/"T+5" or something.

Just thinking at this point, but I think it would be nice to have.

Awesome
 

I love entering dates since I discovered how OF gets them!

Sensitive dates in action row would be cool (tomorrow instead of 26.10.2007)

Gam

Please support "end of month", "end of week"
 

Hi,

Awesome date support.. very intuitive.. unfortunately my favorite "end of the week", "end of the month", "start/beginning of next month" are not (yet) supported.

BTW why not "in 3 days", "in two weeks", etc..

some things you can do with dates... if you haven't already found this.
t = today
tom = tomorrow
t+3 = today plus three days
mon thru sat = this coming day specified

[QUOTE=frankrei;25016]Hi,

Awesome date support.. very intuitive.. unfortunately my favorite "end of the week", "end of the month", "start/beginning of next month" are not (yet) supported.

BTW why not "in 3 days", "in two weeks", etc..[/QUOTE]


Please feel free to submit this as a feature request. And its something I'll keep in mind as we go along as well.

[QUOTE=xmas;13870]What we decided was that the support that Apple has for entering dates is not so good, and also not localizable. So, for instance, "aujourd'huis" would do nothing for you, while "today" would be working out well for the english speakers. [/QUOTE]

Well, even in a properly-localized system, "aujourd'huis" should still do nothing as the word does not contain an 's'. :)

I know. Nobody likes the spelling police. I just had to say something though.

[QUOTE=Stormchild;25265]Well, even in a properly-localized system, "aujourd'huis" should still do nothing as the word does not contain an 's'. :)

I know. Nobody likes the spelling police. I just had to say something though.[/QUOTE]

Fixed.

I was happy to remember that much from high school, when I got through most tests by covering my arm with notes. Also, "Je vais a la Bibliotheque."

[QUOTE=xmas;25110]Please feel free to submit this as a feature request. And its something I'll keep in mind as we go along as well.[/QUOTE]

Along the same lines (I hope this hasn't come up before, the forums are getting a bit unwieldy to search these days), I think if I type "feb 1" while here in November, that it should probably figure out that I mean Feb 1, 2008, not Feb 1, 2007. In fact, anything more than a couple weeks old should get that treatment.

Just a thought.

I recently filed an enhancement request asking for exactly this. Dates which are ambiguous should be the next upcoming one, not the past. Might as well have "Feb 1" mean 1993 otherwise.

If I enter "Feb 1" and mean "Feb 1 2007", I'll do the extra work of correcting it when OF says "2008"; I can live with that.

Likewise, typing in "Next Friday" should normally mean the Friday of [i]next[/i] week (ie, not this Friday, but the next Friday). Right now, it does the same thing as just typing in "Friday" so there's really no point.

Just to be clear with an example: Today is Wednesday, November 21. If I type in "Friday" the date field should be 11/23/07. If I type in "next Friday" it should be 11/30/07. Right now, both phrases result in the same date, which doesn't make as much sense.

I could see how things like "Next Monday" might get confusing, since they span different weeks by most people's calendars (ie, in the above example many people would consider 11/26/07 to be "next Monday" regardless), but I'm still inclined to think that "next" should always mean "the one after the coming one" since it's fairly rare in a GTD system to enter dates in the [i]past[/i] :)

what is "next"
 

jdh-
To me, "next Friday" means "the next Friday that is going to come." So, you're right, "Friday" and "next Friday" do mean the same. I don't have OF yet, but maybe try the phrase "Friday after next." Might work!

[QUOTE=jdh;25496]Likewise, typing in "Next Friday" should normally mean the Friday of [i]next[/i] week (ie, not this Friday, but the next Friday). Right now, it does the same thing as just typing in "Friday" so there's really no point.[/QUOTE]

I agree that dates should always default to the future. I also agree that "Next Friday" is 9 days away as I type this. Note that you can enter "+1w Friday" to get the Friday of next week. That's a format that only a programmer could love, but then, I'm a programmer! :-)

[QUOTE=curt.clifton;25533]I agree that dates should always default to the future. I also agree that "Next Friday" is 9 days away as I type this. Note that you can enter "+1w Friday" to get the Friday of next week. That's a format that only a programmer could love, but then, I'm a programmer! :-)[/QUOTE]

I also think "next Friday" is nine days away, but I run across enough people who think it's two days away that I try to avoid the phrase and say things like "Friday of next week."

You can also use "fri+7" to get Friday of the next week.

I recently sent in feedback requesting that start and due dates default to the future but completion dates to the past. (Sometimes I realize that I forgot to mark a task complete, and that for reporting reasons I need to note when I actually completed it, so I'll enter the completion date in the past instead of just checking it off.)

I'm one of those for whom "next friday" is context dependent, based on today's date and who I'm talking with. "Next friday" today, Wedneday, is "the friday following the one coming up in two days"; on Sunday or Monday, it would be "friday coming up".

I try to avoid it....

How about syncing of start dates? Why bother I hear you ask, when iCal can't display them, but the point is that sync services does, and iCal is NOT the only sync services client out there.

For example, the Missing Sync reads and writes start dates to the truth via sync services, which means if OmniFocus did, it'd integrate with my Windows Mobile device beautifully.

Mark

[QUOTE=jasong;25559]I'm one of those for whom "next friday" is context dependent, based on today's date and who I'm talking with. "Next friday" today, Wedneday, is "the friday following the one coming up in two days"; on Sunday or Monday, it would be "friday coming up".[/QUOTE]

What you have there is [I]this[/I] Friday, or Friday [I]coming[/I] (or simply Friday), as opposed to [I]next[/I] Friday. Next Friday is also known here as Friday week, and the one after that is Friday fortnight, with the one after that known as next Friday fortnight or two-weeks-next-Friday. There's nothing context-dependent about it; it's all very precise and unambiguous. Nobody I know would, on a Sunday or Monday, regard the following Friday as [I]next[/I] Friday.

[QUOTE=coconino;25891]Nobody I know would, on a Sunday or Monday, regard the following Friday as [I]next[/I] Friday.[/QUOTE]

You should meet some more folks! I have many here who in fact consider Friday 30 to be "next friday" when asked today, Sunday 25.

That's why I say it's context dependent. In your context of "friday week" and "fortnights", you have no problem. In my context, I have to be more clear and not assume the meaning.

[QUOTE=jasong;25994]You should meet some more folks![/QUOTE]

I meet plenty of folks, and I'm pleased to say that those I meet seem to have more common sense than those you meet!

Joking, of course, and I take your point, but in my experience here in the UK the problem you cite wouldn't arise.

[QUOTE=coconino;25995]I meet plenty of folks, and I'm pleased to say that those I meet seem to have more common sense than those you meet!

Joking, of course, and I take your point, but in my experience here in the UK the problem you cite wouldn't arise.[/QUOTE]

I'm afraid I don't agree at all (I'm in the UK). While your meaning is correct, it's far from universally used. As Jasong says, it's very context dependant.

Today is Sunday, and I just asked my wife "which Friday is next Friday?". She was very clear that next Friday was Friday this week, and that confirmed my own use. She agreed that by Wednesday or Thursday though, "next Friday" would start to mean Friday next week.

I think it's largely due to proximity. On Sunday, just saying "Friday" can all too easily mean "the day before yesterday", while by the time we get to Wednesday it automatically means "the day after tomorrow", last Friday is referred to as just that, and "next Friday" starts to mean Friday next week!

And this interpretation comes just as much from common sense as yours does. "Next Friday" differentiates it from "last Friday". Yes it's inconsistent, but that's language for you. "Your" system is just as "incorrect" logically, as the day you are describing as "next Friday" is NOT the next Friday on the calendar.

I'll bet you [I]think[/I] everyone you know uses it the way you describe, because the context usually sorts it out for you. I hardly ever find any confusion, even though some people use your system, and some don't, simply because the context makes it obvious anyway. But as a date system in software you lose the context, and it simply won't work for those that don't naturally use the method adopted by the programmers.

Mark

Thanks for future date default discussion
 

[QUOTE=curt.clifton;25533]I agree that dates should always default to the future. I also agree that "Next Friday" is 9 days away as I type this. Note that you can enter "+1w Friday" to get the Friday of next week. That's a format that only a programmer could love, but then, I'm a programmer! :-)[/QUOTE]

Cool - defaulting dates to the future has been discussed at length!

I looking forward to typing "4/16" and getting the next future 4/16.

I'm not looking forward to typing any spreadsheet formula looking dates. I'm happy that you all are working this out.

Thanks,
Zack

I haven't gone through all 7 pages of comments, but I like to enter my dates as "30 June 2007" and such. My version of OF doesn't take it, although "June 30 2007" works fine. It's a small change but it would be nice to have 30 June 2007 supported too.

Also, on quick entry, it would be nice to have a command line option that recognizes the words "start" and "end" or "due," so you could type "start Dec 10 2008 due Dec 25 2008".

This last one could cause confusion on relative dates, but you could also have the code 's' for start 'd' for due ('e' for end) and 't' for today, so that "due s+2d" would mean "due two days after start". "start d-1w" would mean "start one week before due", etc.

That last stuff is the least important, of the list, but I added it for fun.

[QUOTE=MacBerry;25998]And this interpretation comes just as much from common sense as yours does. "Next Friday" differentiates it from "last Friday". Yes it's inconsistent, but that's language for you. "Your" system is just as "incorrect" logically, as the day you are describing as "next Friday" is NOT the next Friday on the calendar.[/QUOTE]

Can't we just type "friday" to get this Friday, and "next friday" to get the Friday of next week. Even if your use of "next friday" in speech can mean just "friday", would anyone every choose to type the unnecessary "next" unless they wanted Friday of next week? If the only people who would type "next" meant Friday of next week, wouldn't it make sense to make this the default (or at least an optional) behavior? BTW here in Boston I've never heard anyone refer to the upcoming Friday as "next Friday". It just seems like a waste of the word "next" ;)

Well no, if we're going to use "natural language", and it's not natural to a large number of users, then it won't work!

An argument about what should and shouldn't be in common use in language is pointless, because even if you "win" on logical terms, you won't change how people speak.

I agree that if it is ever the case that if someone were to ever type "next friday" and mean the upcoming Friday, then we can't assume that "next friday" is the Friday after next. However, even if you would use that form in speech, would you ever type "next" if you didn't have to? If so, maybe a choice between the two uses is in order, because I've run into a number of cases where I wanted to schedule something for a weekday of the next week, and had to use the calendar instead of typing it out the way I would say it.

Well, I'd agree that just typing "Friday" would always mean the next Friday on the calendar, or at least would on the (logical) assumption that dates are always in the future, so it's not "Friday just gone".

An option I don't know, because I'm not sure how you'd define it, given that I see people changing what they mean by "next Friday" depending on what today is and the context.

Don't get me wrong, I like the idea of natural language entry, and think that having Friday always mean the next Friday on the calendar, and next Friday mean the Friday after that is totally logical, so that if we had to have it and only one way, that'd be it, but I just think it'd be "wrong" in many people's minds. I can think of loads of situations where people normally use "next Friday" to mean the next one on the calendar, such as when speaking ON a Friday, and worry that they'd apply the same here.

Mark

[QUOTE=curt.clifton;25533]I agree that dates should always default to the future. [/QUOTE]

It seems the nice folks at Omni have changed this behavior in some recent bulid. Kudos to them!

[QUOTE=curt.clifton;25533] I also agree that "Next Friday" is 9 days away as I type this. Note that you can enter "+1w Friday" to get the Friday of next week. That's a format that only a programmer could love, but then, I'm a programmer! :-)[/QUOTE]

Apropos this discussion: the meaning of "Next Friday" etc. varies dramatically based on the person, where they were born, where they live, etc. etc. There is, quite simply, no single answer that's going to keep everyone happy. If you don't believe me, go check out the archives of alt.usage.english on the topic. (Whether anyone even remembers Usenet these days is a different question.)

what are the "legal" us english abbreviations for days of the week? i noticed you used tues. i tried using t for tuesday and got the beginning of the month which doesn't make any sense to me. it would be nice to be able to use m t w th f s su or something similar.

Bug? 12/12 + 1w should not be 12/8
 

Maybe this is because I'm changing a due date rather than setting it initially, or maybe something else ... but when I type "1w" or "+1w" in the due date column, I'm getting 12/8/2007, which is 4 days ago.

A bit more freedom
 

Thanks for the wonderful date adding options, yet I fell victim of my own language trying to enter "this friday" hoping to get a reference to this friday, yet instead the first of the month was chosen. I am sure that such a small extension can save a lot of confusion to the users in the future!

[QUOTE=dvrooman;28120]what are the "legal" us english abbreviations for days of the week? i noticed you used tues. i tried using t for tuesday and got the beginning of the month which doesn't make any sense to me. it would be nice to be able to use m t w th f s su or something similar.[/QUOTE]

the allowed abbreviations are the first 3 letters, by locale.

Edited the first post to reflect some changes, notably in our this/next/last handling.

[QUOTE=xmas;29400]the allowed abbreviations are the first 3 letters, by locale.[/QUOTE]

thanks for the info

The post about dates would be helpful to place in the Help documentation.

Still some issues with Natural Date
 

For instance, the dates fields do not appear to allow you to mix natural language dates with exact times.

Create a task - and type into "Due Date" "Tommorrow 8:00AM or Thursday 8AM" The date is populated with 12/31/00 12:00AM. In order to achieve that I actually have to type in "1/11/08 8:00AM or 1/17/08 8:00AM."

Is that expected behavior or a bug?

prater

Sounds like some sort of bug, as both of those examples worked as expected for me.

renamed this thread to be slightly more informative at a glance.

Day-month-year changed to year-month-day
 

I do also have problems in OF 1.0. If I type 1-2-08, OF understands 8th of February 2001, instead of 1st of february 2008. If I type 1-2, OF converts the date to 2nd of January instead of 1st of February.

In the "International" system preference, I have selected Australian english in Language, Australia is selected in Formats (no customization) and Spanish is selected in Input Menu. In both Australia and Spain, 1-2-08 is 1st of February 2008, and 1-2 is 1st of february.

Any suggestions?

Choosing the appropriate month-day-year sequence based on your locale is quite challenging, as it is hard to know exactly what you mean.

We have some bugs open on this already, and I refer to this thread whenever I work on dates to make sure I'm addressing issues.

As sneaky peaks aren't going out every 3 hours for a while, we'll let you know when the next round of fixes goes in.

Unexpected +1w behavior
 

This is a quibble, and only mildly annoying. I did run this by the support ninjas, and they said that this was the expected behavior for dates. I wonder if the group reading this agrees.
The problem comes when adding weeks to a date found by typing the day abbreviation. For example, today, a Thursday, when I type "fri+1w", what I expect is that the next Friday will be selected (tomorrow, 4/4) and 1 week will be added, giving Friday, 4/11 (national information day?). Instead, I get the week following that, or 4/18. Going a bit further:

Today (Thu, 4/03)
Fri+1w = 4/18 but Fri1w = 4/11
Sat+1w = 4/19, but Sat1w = 4/12
Sun+1w = 4/13 = Sun1w
Mon+1w = Mon1w = 4/14

The same thing happens with "+1d" and "1d" and
"+1m" and "1m".
It seems that the + sign is adding an extra week when the day is during the current week, but not if the next occurrence is in the next week.
I'm actually pleasantly surprised that the "fri1w" construction works at all, and interested that it works differently than the "+1w"--seems like they should be the same. It also seems to me that there should be some way for me to get to 4/11 by using the "+" sign, and I have found no formula that does it. "Fri+0w" gives me no date at all, indicating, properly, that it's not a valid date.

Overall, however, I feel that when we're complaining about stuff like this, I would take that as a good sign!

btw--this is version 1.0.1

[QUOTE]the allowed abbreviations are the first 3 letters, by locale.[/QUOTE]
I do have the german localization and following issues:
[B]sat, mon, fri[/B] doesn't work
none of the 3 letters german abbreviations for weekdays works
[B]2d [/B]don't work ([B]2w and 2m[/B] works)
"[B]heute[/B]"=[B]today[/B] works
"[B]morgen[/B]"=[B]tomorrow[/B] don't work (jumps to 01.01.2008)

These issues appeared with the localized versions.

Yeah. The inconsistencies with date parsing prompted me to just enter the desired date as MyBrainDateFunction > OF date calcs.

Hi,

I noticed that "tonight" has its own internal definition as a time (11 PM when I tested). Is this value relative to what "today" is set for? (My default due date is 5PM.) If not, is it possible to redefine it?

Additionally, is it possible to have the term "morning" defined so that I can use "tomorrow morning" as a due date? And it is possible to also have phrases such as "tomorrow night", "Thursday night" and "Saturday morning" defined? I know you can specify the times but I really like the idea of a vaguer term such as "tomorrow morning" automatically being translated into a date.

Thanks!

I too would like to redefine "tonight" as 6PM, so I don't have to see the task popup on my overdue list until I get home from work. Can the default be user adjustable?

[QUOTE=Poenitentium;58037]Hi,

I noticed that "tonight" has its own internal definition as a time (11 PM when I tested). Is this value relative to what "today" is set for? (My default due date is 5PM.) If not, is it possible to redefine it?

Additionally, is it possible to have the term "morning" defined so that I can use "tomorrow morning" as a due date? And it is possible to also have phrases such as "tomorrow night", "Thursday night" and "Saturday morning" defined? I know you can specify the times but I really like the idea of a vaguer term such as "tomorrow morning" automatically being translated into a date.

Thanks![/QUOTE]

[QUOTE=xmas;23341]I've thought about this, it might turn up someday as "start+5"/"S+5"/"T+5" or something.

Just thinking at this point, but I think it would be nice to have.[/QUOTE]

Whatever happened to this idea?

I think it would be nice to have

start + xd or due - xd as a way to enter due or start date relative to start or due date.

[QUOTE=ksrhee;73983]Whatever happened to this idea?

I think it would be nice to have

start + xd or due - xd as a way to enter due or start date relative to start or due date.[/QUOTE]

This is working.

You can easily put a start date by tabbing to the start date column, then type:
tod for today
tom for tomorrow
mon, tue, wed, thu, fri, sat for any dat of the week
+1m, +2w, +1y, for adding time to today's date.
+1d, +2d

I think what is being asked for here (I know it is something I want, at least) is the ability to specify a relative date. For example, this action is due 3 days after it first becomes available.

[QUOTE=SpiralOcean;74036]This is working.

You can easily put a start date by tabbing to the start date column, then type:
tod for today
tom for tomorrow
mon, tue, wed, thu, fri, sat for any dat of the week
+1m, +2w, +1y, for adding time to today's date.
+1d, +2d[/QUOTE]

Yes, this is true, but that's not what I was asking. What I was asking is if I put 3/2/10 as the due date, I could enter D - 2d for 2/28/10 as start date, or if I put 3/1/10 as the start date, I could enter S + 2d for 3/3/10 for due date. This is not currently available. I would think the first scenarios is more common than second but both will be useful.

Just got a reply from OG that this is in the feature request, but not yet implemented.

Ahh... I didn't read carefully enough.

It seems like there are two requests here.

One for an inline date calculator. So if there is a start date already entered of
Feb 26, 2010, and I type in +2d. Then the date will be changed to Feb 28, 2010.

And the other is to assign a relative date based on completion.
Completion +2d.

Both great suggestions. My apologies for the extra noise.

Unless I'm missing something here, why would you want a date relative to [i]completion[/i]? If it's to repeat the task, then that's already there in the repeat settings in the inspector (start again, due again and repeat every).

That said, the ability to specify a relative date for start and due dates would definitely be a good idea provided the relative date is stored as a formula/calculation and not just converted to a static date. While entering "S+3d" might be a handy shortcut, I can generally do that in my head so there's no that much point. On the other hand having a scenario where adjusting the start date could also adjust the due date would be a useful feature.

[QUOTE=jdh;74041]Unless I'm missing something here, why would you want a date relative to [i]completion[/i]? If it's to repeat the task, then that's already there in the repeat settings in the inspector (start again, due again and repeat every).

That said, the ability to specify a relative date for start and due dates would definitely be a good idea provided the relative date is stored as a formula/calculation and not just converted to a static date. While entering "S+3d" might be a handy shortcut, I can generally do that in my head so there's no that much point. On the other hand having a scenario where adjusting the start date could also adjust the due date would be a useful feature.[/QUOTE]

Here's an example:

Workout project repeating
-workout at gym
-workout at gym + 2 d after action becomes available
-workout at gym + 2 d after action becomes available

Hmm... now that I think about it. There is the option to repeat action after start date. so.. in the current version.

workout project
-workout at gym start:today due:today repeat:start again 2 days after completion

This allows flexible repeating tasks.

I imagine there are examples of tasks that are not repeating where one may want a start or due date 2days after the task becomes available.

[QUOTE=SpiralOcean;74042]Hmm... now that I think about it. There is the option to repeat action after start date. so.. in the current version.[/QUOTE]
Exactly, which is why I was confused. I use tasks with start date based repeats regularly. :)

In fact, if you're repeating by start date or due date, OF is also clever enough to adjust the other date accordingly in the new task. For example, if I have a task that started yesterday and is due on Sunday set to start again after 3 days, then if I complete that task today, the next task would have a start date of Monday and a due date of Wednesday.