Living in two cities - roadblock for OF?
 

I've been using OF for a few years now, and I'm sadly thinking of calling it quits. I live in two cities and can't figure out how to set up contexts satisfactorily with the hierarchical organization that OF imposes. A tag system would do the trick; can anyone think of a solution using OF?

I split my time living in two cities, A and B.

I have similar things that I do in each city: work on computer, make phone calls, run errands (Trader Joe's, Costco, Home Depot...).

I can set up my contexts like this:

Errand : Costco : A [COLOR="Silver"](need to buy at Costco in city A)[/COLOR]
Errand : Costco : B [COLOR="silver"](need to buy at Costco in city B)[/COLOR]
Errand : Costco [COLOR="silver"](need to buy in Costco anywhere)[/COLOR]
Errand : HomeDepot : A
Errand : HomeDepot : B
Errand : HomeDepot
etc.

Or like this:

A : Errand : Costco
A : Errand : HomeDepot
B : Errand : Costco
B : Errand : HomeDepot
Errand : Costco
Errand : HomeDepot

But each has its issues. The first scenario makes it a big pain to pause all my city A tasks when I'm in city B, and vice versa. The second scenario prevents me from seeing all my Trader Joe items together, which is a big pain when I'm trying to shop there.

Am I missing something? Or do I just need to add myself to the long list of people wanting "tags"?

thanks!
Anton

Don't most of your projects containing these troublesome tasks reside in one city or the other? If you have a folder of projects for City A, and a folder of projects for City B, focusing on one folder will hide all but the tasks relating to projects in that folder. Projects that are globally applicable can go in a third folder. Select the global folder plus the folder for the city you are in and hit the focus button. Save as a perspective for easier use.

Thanks, whpalmer4. Unfortunately, most of my projects have actions in both locations. My work projects are not city-specific. (I could make a few of the projects city-spefic by, e.g., splitting [I]Groceries[/I] into [I]A Groceries[/I] and [I]B Groceries[/I], but that would be awkward and wouldn't address the whole problem anyway.)

Okay, there are multiple ways one might approach relieving this particular feline of its fur suit. See [URL="http://forums.omnigroup.com/showthread.php?t=21977"]this thread[/URL] for some scripts which can be used to alter the status of one or more contexts. I've just posted a variant which prompts for a context substring and cycles all of the matching contexts one step around the active / on hold / dropped state triangle. You could use it to quickly put all of the City A contexts on hold (or dropped, for even greater invisibility) and make the City B contexts active. I would go with the Errand : Costco : City A structure (and use it myself, though I don't have the multi-homed life problem).

Hmm, that might just do it, whpalmer4. Big thanks for the script - I'll try it out!