iGTD to Omnifocus importer now has progress bar
 

Importing a large iGTD file to Omnifocus through Applescript is a little slow so I have now wrapped the script as an app in Applescript Studio and added a progress bar.

The main window also displays the name of the action or project which is currently being imported, and the SQL which was submitted to Sqlite3 to get it.

The new version of the importer is at:

[URL="http://web.mac.com/robinfrancistrew/Site/iGTD2Omnifocus.html"]http://web.mac.com/robinfrancistrew/Site/iGTD2Omnifocus.html[/URL]

Thanks for this excellent little application.

I am unclear as to how to get this work. I try to run the application but nothing happens. It starts to open and then just closes. Can someone help explain what I'm doing wrong?

If you have iGTD installed on your system the app should display a dialog asking whether you want to import your iGTD data to Omnifocus.

[IMG]http://web.mac.com/robinfrancistrew/iWeb/Site/iGTD2Dialog.png[/IMG]

I have sent you a private message to suggest some steps.

Please note that the Applescript Studio version, with the progress bar, appears to need OS X 10.4

Anyone using an earlier version of OS X may need to use the plain Applescript version, which has no progress indicators, and thus requires a little patience (the import process is slow).

Both versions are at:

[URL="http://web.mac.com/robinfrancistrew/Site/iGTD2Omnifocus.html"]http://web.mac.com/robinfrancistrew/Site/iGTD2Omnifocus.html[/URL]

I have iGTD 2 running on 10.4 and this script also starts and ends with no indication it has done anything...

I downloaded the regular raw applescript and it ran...

Thanks, Lee

Thanks for the feedback - there may be some dependency that I am overlooking - has anyone run the progress bar version successfully on their system ?

Also just tried it and nothing happened, just opens and then closes. Older version works just fine.

I'm probably not going to have time to look into this for a few months now - for the moment I'll just have to recommend that people use the older version if the newer one doesn't seem to launch properly on their system ...

Here's why it (iGTD2Omni029.app) won't work for anyone except Rob Trew:

ZeroLink: could not load .o file: /Users/robintrew/iGTD2Omni001/build/iGTD2Omni001.build/Debug/iGTD2Omni025.build/Objects-normal/i386/main.ob
Sep 10 00:26:24 genmac crashdump[13713]: iGTD2Omni001 crashed
Sep 10 00:26:26 genmac crashdump[13713]: crash report written to: /Users/gentry/Library/Logs/CrashReporter/iGTD2Omni001.crash.log

I have rebuilt the [URL="http://web.mac.com/robinfrancistrew/Site/iGTD2Omnifocus_files/iGTD2Omni.app_1.zip"]applet[/URL], and would be interested to know whether it now runs for those who were having difficulty.

just tried it and it worked great for me.

mt

BTW: Thanks!! made it very easy couple of clicks and good to go.

Good ! Thank you for the feedback.

What happened to the app?
 

Hello,

I've been tracking this app, and the script worked fairly well for me, but was slow (probably due to the amount of data I have in my iGTD database), and appeared to futz out after a few minutes or so. I was interested to see the author had created a newer more sophisticated version, but it has apparently disappeared from his site...?

Anybody know where it has gone, or might have a copy of the applet?

Thanks!
-ed

[QUOTE=edglazer;25445]Hello,

I've been tracking this app, and the script worked fairly well for me, but was slow (probably due to the amount of data I have in my iGTD database), and appeared to crap out after a few minutes or so. I was interested to see the author had created a newer more sophisticated version, but it has apparently disappeared from his site...?

Anybody know where it has gone, or might have a copy of the applet?

Thanks!
-ed[/QUOTE]

When I click on the this link: [URL="http://web.mac.com/robinfrancistrew/Site/iGTD2Omnifocus.html"]http://web.mac.com/robinfrancistrew/Site/iGTD2Omnifocus.html[/URL] I can download the script just fine.

[QUOTE=edglazer;25445]the script worked fairly well for me, but was slow (probably due to the amount of data I have in my iGTD database), and appeared to **** out after a few minutes or so[/QUOTE]

"Appeared" may be the key word here. The applescript interface to Omnifocus is irreducibly slow, and you will need more than a few minutes or so if there is a lot of data.

The other version has been broken by some Applescript changes - I will try to find time to mend it. Its only advantage is feedback on where the process has got to, which tends to prevent worried users from needlessly aborting after a few minutes.

I would suggest planning to leave it alone to cook for a good period of time while you read a book or have a meal :-)

[QUOTE=RobTrew;25853]"Appeared" may be the key word here. The applescript interface to Omnifocus is irreducibly slow, and you will need more than a few minutes or so if there is a lot of data.[/QUOTE]

Part of the slowness here is probably that OmniFocus is very aggressive about preserving your data. Each modifying change invoked via AppleScript saves to disk in a transaction, and this can make this quite slow if you are doing a ton of operations all at once.

You can turn this behavior off by setting 'will autosave' on the document to 'false'. Once you are done with your bulk import, you should turn it back on.

OmniFocus currently won't turn this back on for you, so if you leave it off, the user's document will get marked dirty and no changes will be saved in it until they close it.

Thanks for this script! Works a treat. And now I have (somewhat sadly, but forging bravely ahead nonetheless) officially jumped ship from iGTD to Omnifocus.

In case this is helpful for anyone else: I had to move my iGTD data from an older laptop to a new one that did not have iGTD already installed on it. So I just created the iGTD folder in the Application Support directory on the new laptop and copied the iGTD.sql file there. I ran the script from Script Editor. I didn't see a progress bar but I just waited and eventually it finished. I had 280 tasks (with lots of long notes) in 42 projects in iGTD and it took just about 9 minutes to import it all into Omnifocus.

My setup: MacBook 2.2 Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo, 1GB RAM, OS 10.5.1

[QUOTE=Tim Wood;25886]You can turn this behavior off by setting 'will autosave' on the document to 'false'. Once you are done with your bulk import, you should turn it back on.

OmniFocus currently won't turn this back on for you, so if you leave it off, the user's document will get marked dirty and no changes will be saved in it until they close it.[/QUOTE]

Thanks, Tim, that makes sense. My concern about implementing this is, however, that users will be left with a document marked 'dirty' if they abort the script before it has finished ...

Perhaps I will make this change if I resurrect the version with a progress bar.

Thanks, I'll give it another try and be more patient.

And thanks for the work on the script/app - it's well appreciated!

I re-tried the applescript verson, this time being patient, and it worked flawlessly. Glad to be working with OmniFocus finally!

Thanks for the work on the script and for sharing it with the community, Rob!

[QUOTE=RobTrew;25992]My concern about implementing this is, however, that users will be left with a document marked 'dirty' if they abort the script before it has finished ...[/QUOTE]

If the user aborts the script before it finishes, it seems reasonable to leave things dirty rather than to automatically save their partial import. (This is how we originally implemented the Kinkless importer, and turning off autosave during the script made it run much, much faster.)

Done.

I have uploaded the amended version, and it is certainly very much faster.

This is great in that it helped me get all my iGTD tasks over with no problems except for one. Almost all my completed actions are duplicated. Some of them I want to keep for future use. Any suggestions? Any script people out there able to make something to remove duplicate actions?

A duplicate-eliminator could in principle be written ...

This is not a problem that has been reported by other users of the script. Were the duplicated actions repeating actions in iGTD ? Do they, for example, have the same text but different start/due dates ?