new column settings broke my perspectives
 

As of build 95718, all of my perspectives have the optional columns turned off. This is not fun. Is there a way to turn them all back on by default?

(sent via feedback, as well)

Along those same lines, even if you configure column settings on a saved perspective, hiding the window (click the red x) will reset the column heading back to default on open. You need to then click the Perspective again to have the columns reappear.

And when I attempt to resize the columns I get this error message:

[IMG]http://www.cobbers.com/temp/Picture%201.png[/IMG]

Hope it helps.

columns and mode views
 

I love the extra column flexibility, but I reverted to a build without it.

I use the main mode views all the time (icons in upper left, command 1 & 2) as well as a couple of perspectives. When I switch to a perspective and back to the main modes, the perspective settings stick, overriding the ones I set for the main modes.

An obvious workaround is to use only perspectives and shortcut keys (i.e. make new perspectives of the main modes with column settings the way I want) - but that seems to defeat the purpose of having the two modes available.

We'll see what Monday brings! ;-)

Steven

[QUOTE=tastiger;27788]And when I attempt to resize the columns I get this error message:[/QUOTE]

The case of this I could find is now fixed in 95744. Somehow I managed to never click outside the resizing area in my testing last night =)

[QUOTE=sjn;27792]I love the extra column flexibility, but I reverted to a build without it.

I use the main mode views all the time (icons in upper left, command 1 & 2) as well as a couple of perspectives. When I switch to a perspective and back to the main modes, the perspective settings stick, overriding the ones I set for the main modes.

An obvious workaround is to use only perspectives and shortcut keys (i.e. make new perspectives of the main modes with column settings the way I want) - but that seems to defeat the purpose of having the two modes available.

We'll see what Monday brings! ;-)

Steven[/QUOTE]

I don't quite understand what you are seeing. Could you Send Feedback with prefs and app support files and steps that end up with results different from what you expect?

[QUOTE=Tim Wood;27825]I don't quite understand what you are seeing. Could you Send Feedback with prefs and app support files and steps that end up with results different from what you expect?[/QUOTE]

After playing with this more, I realised I had fundamentally misunderstood Modes and their relationship to Perspectives.

In particular, I had failed to grasp that Perspectives actually incorporate BOTH Modes, not just the Mode you choose to open each Perspective in.

It was that little "Also restore settings for the other mode" checkbox in the Perspectives window- which I had missed - that was critical for getting the behaviour I was looking for. Once I checked that for each my Perspectives, and set the columns for the 'other' mode too, everything functioned as expected.

So definitely just a false alarm on my part - more to come, no doubt.....;-)

Steven

[QUOTE=Tim Wood;27824]The case of this I could find is now fixed in 95744. Somehow I managed to never click outside the resizing area in my testing last night =)[/QUOTE]

I'm still getting this error when I click the column headings.

I'm not having any luck reproducing further cases if this; could you let me know exactly where you are clicking on the column header? Is anyone else having this problem show up still that can chime in too?

[QUOTE=Tim Wood;27890]I'm not having any luck reproducing further cases if this; could you let me know exactly where you are clicking on the column header? Is anyone else having this problem show up still that can chime in too?[/QUOTE]

Since the previous build, the problem disappeared. So, it's working fine.

Thanks.

[QUOTE=tastiger;27788]And when I attempt to resize the columns[/QUOTE]

My window resizes!

I've never seen that before.....

Btw, I hate that the start/due date columns have gone. Can I still download an old build that has them? The last 3 builds are broken.

Victor.

there seems to be several different issues represented on this thread and I'm not sure if this belongs or not, but given that it’s on topic I'll add it here.

With the new build, the relationship between column widths and perspectives is hosed. Maybe there’s a setting I'm missing somewhere, but what I'm seeing is when I switch to a perspective, the project field is not wide enough so the project name wraps and I get double line spacing. I manually re-size and all is well until I switch to a different perspective and then switch back. Then it’s right back where it was. My re-sizing is not sticking. This sounds minor but it’s so visually distracting it’s almost making the app unusable for me. Going to look for a prior build to use until this is remedied.

[QUOTE=rmathes;27927]I manually re-size and all is well until I switch to a different perspective and then switch back. Then it’s right back where it was. My re-sizing is not sticking. This sounds minor but it’s so visually distracting it’s almost making the app unusable for me.[/QUOTE]

I wonder if clicking the "camera" button in the Perspectives window once you've set it to your liking would solve your problem.

that was the first thing I tried (well, after resizing and switching back).

Yeah, I tried resizing the column and then re-snapshotting the perspective.

No go. Still defaults to the ‘too short’ column width.

[QUOTE=VicDiesel;27923]Btw, I hate that the start/due date columns have gone. Can I still download an old build that has them? The last 3 builds are broken.

Victor.[/QUOTE]

They're not totally gone, just forgotten. I'm running build 95760, and all I need to do to get them back is to go to the View menu, go down to 'Columns' which will pop out a little sub-menu listing the columns you can turn on and off. Pick the one you're missing and watch it appear.

Seems like you might have to redo this every time you update to a new build, until we get this bug squashed.

[QUOTE=Lizard;27933]They're not totally gone, just forgotten.

....

Seems like you might have to redo this every time you update to a new build, until we get this bug squashed.[/QUOTE]

You know there are several more things that are forgotten, right? Such as the colours of the fonts.

Victor.

[QUOTE=rmathes;27927]there seems to be several different issues represented on this thread and I'm not sure if this belongs or not, but given that it’s on topic I'll add it here.

With the new build, the relationship between column widths and perspectives is hosed. Maybe there’s a setting I'm missing somewhere, but what I'm seeing is when I switch to a perspective, the project field is not wide enough so the project name wraps and I get double line spacing. I manually re-size and all is well until I switch to a different perspective and then switch back. Then it’s right back where it was. My re-sizing is not sticking. This sounds minor but it’s so visually distracting it’s almost making the app unusable for me. Going to look for a prior build to use until this is remedied.[/QUOTE]

Are you saving the new perspective when you rearranged the column? Otherwise, it won't remember it. Go to perspective window, select the one you are at and then press the camera button. It has worked fine for me for the past several builds.

yep, see post #14

[QUOTE=rmathes;27938]yep, see post #14[/QUOTE]

Strange. It's working fine in my system. I can switch back and forth w/o losing the pre-set column width either from toolbar buttons or perspective dialog window.

Now one more thing. Did you manually select the right perspective in the perspective window before clicking the camera? I noticed that it doesn't automatically select the perspective I'm on.

OK, this is REALLY weird, but in the end positive, I guess.

Yes, I had been selecting the proper perspective in the perspectives window because it wouldn’t auto highlight the active one (a design change I'd recommend). But after re-saving the perspective, the way I was navigating between perspectives was via the keyboard shortcut and even after saving it would still default back to the original column width.

But after reading an above post where people said they were navigating off the perspectives menu and it was fine, I tried that (after once again re-saving my perspectives). That worked fine, it retained the column widths. So then I tried again using the keyboard shortcuts and those are working now, too!

Takes me back to my software QA days and the joys of unreproducible bugs.

i hate the new column flexibility. now it's practically impossible to get column widths to match between perspectives, or even to get the date columns to match each other within one perspective. and if i do spend time getting columns to match between perspectives, then i discover that one of the widths needs adjustment, i have to go into *every single perspective* to fix it. this basically means i will tend to live with column widths i don't care for (so, i will hate the program a little bit whenever i use it), and that i will avoid making new perspectives in the first place, since it's so much work getting them consistent with one another.

"thanks" for making OF even more cumbersome to use.

I'm getting the same error message (***-[NSCFDictionary setObject:forKey:]: attempt to insert nil key) when I click on the only of the column headings. And frankly, I would be the last person to attempt to insert a nil key.... ;-)

Just updated to latest version and the error message went away.

[QUOTE=markb;27992]i hate the new column flexibility. now it's practically impossible to get column widths to match between perspectives, or even to get the date columns to match each other within one perspective. and if i do spend time getting columns to match between perspectives, then i discover that one of the widths needs adjustment, i have to go into *every single perspective* to fix it. this basically means i will tend to live with column widths i don't care for (so, i will hate the program a little bit whenever i use it), and that i will avoid making new perspectives in the first place, since it's so much work getting them consistent with one another.
[/QUOTE]

Yeah, I spent some time not long ago trying to get the splitter between the Library and the content view to be consistent across perspectives, and I started to do the same with the columns when I saw that they'd moved into perspective land.

Gave up. Not worth it.

I can see wanting to include or not include certain columns in a given perspective, I suppose, (although I'm not clamoring for that feature myself), but I can't imagine needing this granularity of per-perspective control. Of course that opens up implementation questions: where do you store widths if the column visibility is in the perspective but putting widths there is a giant headache for users?

One answer would be to store app-wide widths for each column combination. Users wouldn't/shouldn't need to think about this at all, but observant users would notice that if they have a view with name, due date, and duration and adjust the width of the name column, the same width would appear in other views that include those particular columns.

Just so that i don't sound too cranky about this recent change, let me say thanks for one column-related feature: I like the way the window adjusts to the total column width. In other apps, when I grab ahold of a column's edge and start to move it, I never really know what other columns will adjust to accommodate my change, and it probably won't be the ones I really want to resize, which means an adjustment to one column's width will often require tinkering with several column widths to get what I want. In OmniFocus, the answer to that question is simple: when I resize a column, none of the other column widths will change. Thanks for [B]that[/B], really.

Perspective-specific column widths seem unnecessary
 

I have only three Perspectives I care about, and the default column widths seem OK so far. So the recent change was not a personal hardship. But I foresee making more use of Perspectives. So I agree with the concerns about perspective-specific column widths.

[QUOTE=davisre]One answer would be to store app-wide widths for each column combination.[/QUOTE]
That seems like the right solution to me. This additional development effort would save the users a lot of time and frustration.

[SIZE="1"][submitted as formal feedback][/SIZE]

for me what would be ideal is nicely-behaving "auto" column widths, and to have this be the default. the only reason i change column widths is to make dates, projects, and contexts not wrap to two lines. it's easy to imagine the computer taking care of this for me, where those columns are always wide enough to make everything in the window one line, and the "topic" column is the lowest-priority if there's not enough total width to make everything one line tall.

[QUOTE=markb]for me what would be ideal is nicely-behaving "auto" column widths, and to have this be the default.[/QUOTE]
It would be interesting to experience auto-width.

I suspect I'd want to override it for some columns (e.g., context in Planning mode, Project in Context mode) because some entries are unusually long. I'd rather truncate some of these rather than steal space from the Name column, which I want to be as long as practical.

If nicely-behaving auto-width could be based on the width of the majority of column values, not simply the widest value, I expect I'd be happy.

[QUOTE=markb;28146]for me what would be ideal is nicely-behaving "auto" column widths, and to have this be the default. the only reason i change column widths is to make dates, projects, and contexts not wrap to two lines. it's easy to imagine the computer taking care of this for me, where those columns are always wide enough to make everything in the window one line, and the "topic" column is the lowest-priority if there's not enough total width to make everything one line tall.[/QUOTE]
I feel the same about this one.

[QUOTE=Ward;28151]It would be interesting to experience auto-width.

I suspect I'd want to override it for some columns (e.g., context in Planning mode, Project in Context mode) because some entries are unusually long. I'd rather truncate some of these rather than steal space from the Name column, which I want to be as long as practical.

If nicely-behaving auto-width could be based on the width of the majority of column values, not simply the widest value, I expect I'd be happy.[/QUOTE]

I would like to have "auto-widths" for columns also!

auto widths would be OK and I can see the appeal, but my preference is for the ability to set default column widths that apply across perspectives.

Visually, I just like a little space in my columns so it orients right to my eye. The problem with auto widths is you get JUST enough width to avoid wrapping and that always looks cramped to me.

But if we could get them as options to do either, that would rock. But I agree, the current way it’s done and having to maintain it at the Perspective level is a problem.