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-   -   Due Date with no time (http://forums.omnigroup.com/showthread.php?t=21975)

spiliog 2011-08-25 03:05 AM

Due Date with no time
 
Can I set a "Due Date" but leave the "time" option blank? (In other words, is it possible to set a "Due Date" with no time?)
Thank U

RobTrew 2011-08-25 05:08 AM

[QUOTE=spiliog;100943]Can I set a "Due Date" but leave the "time" option blank? [/QUOTE]

A date value inescapably has a time component. (it is simply a number of seconds since the UTC start of 1970).

You can set this to 0 (the stroke of midnight) or to the default setting under [B]Preferences > Data > Default time for Due Dates[/B]

but while you might not be interested in time, time alas, is interested in you - and the system measures dates in seconds rather than days ...

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spiliog 2011-08-25 07:12 AM

Thanks for your reply but my point/question/request is if you have the ability to put or not a time and thew problem is that by default the system has a time (which is a problem if you use iPhone or iPad apps because notifications appear during midnight).
Thanks any way!

whpalmer4 2011-08-25 08:00 AM

Rob explained why it is that there is a time associated with the date. If you want a different behavior, why don't you describe in some detail how you propose it should work? Are there no notifications done for date-only items? Where do items with dates only get sorted when sorting by start/due/completion date? Does the app just not show the time in the UI, but treat it as due at a fixed time in the day? Obvious choices would be the very beginning or end of the day, but different users probably will have different choices and now we need some additional complexity to provide a UI for setting it. How does the user entering a date only signal to the program that it should ignore the value in the time field? If you set up something with a date only and later change your mind and need a time, how is that done? Ideally, none of these changes make it any less convenient to use when specifying dates with times.

What is wrong with a notification at midnight on the iPhone or iPad? In the limit, that is when something due on a particular day but at no particular time is due. If someone tells you that something is due on Tuesday, is it not due at the very last moment of Tuesday, barring an agreement that it is due at some earlier time?

RobTrew 2011-08-25 01:20 PM

And of course all of this is scriptable, so if you wanted to reset all of your existing due dates to a time which works better with your iOS device you could do that, and then change the default due date time to the preferred value under preferences.

spiliog 2011-08-25 11:47 PM

Great point whpalmer4 but my "request" is for an option to set or not a time/alert. Simple as that

whpalmer4 2011-08-26 12:09 AM

You initially asked if you can set a due date without setting an associated time. You can't. OmniFocus only presents an illusion of caring about dates, but really, everything is just some number of seconds after the beginning of time, and dates just make it easier for humans to specify which instant in time. If you restated your question as "is it possible to set a due date only setting the month without setting the day of the month?" you would have a comparable situation. What does it mean for an action to be due in August?

If you want the option of controlling alert behavior on an action-by-action basis, then ask for that. That makes a lot more sense than asking OmniFocus to invent new data types, which still wouldn't provide generally useful control of notifications.


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