I know it might be hard to implement but reloading all data by restarting OF is like cheating. It should be a differential change. All changes that are safe should just be made in the background. Only if a conflict arrise should the user be asked how to proceed. The dialog that apple is using for contacts/iCal etc. is pretty good. You see the conflicting item and you choose which change to use.

I just synced my phone. Then I hit a manual sync on OF Desktop (to avoid a future interrupt from OF Desktop). OF Desktop then immediately interrupted me during _that_ action and told me I needed to re-open my database.

I'm like, "No sh*t. Just do it please."

Actually, colicoid, OmniFocus IS detecting a conflict. You may not think you've changed anything since the last time OmniFocus displayed that message, but time has passed, so there's some internal changes, like actions becoming due or overdue.

That being said, I am working with the engineers to review all the times the message is getting displayed and make sure none of them are unnecessary.

We also have a long-term plan to get rid of the message entirely, but it's going to require a lot more re-engineering (read: temporary instability, possible data corruption) than we can really afford for 1.1.

So Ken outsmarted me and figured out a way to get rid of the dialog without all the re-engineering. It's still kind of a temporary fix, and we will need to re-engineer eventually.

But please let us know what you think of the new behavior. Is the auto-refresh without any warning disconcerting?

From the release notes:
[QUOTE]Synchronization will no longer display a "Reopen now or later?" alert dialog; it just refreshes the document.[/QUOTE]

Refresh without asking is good
 

I vote for the refresh without asking.
Sometimes you really do not want to give the application attentions, because you are doing someting else.
Also the first times it happened, I was thinking someting went wrong with the sync.

As far as I believe how the sync works, there's hundreds of zip files on your server, one for each task. Why does OF prompt me to reopen the database when it knows what task matches up with the local task - why can't it just update that task, and not prompt me to re-open the DB. But just thinking about it as I'm writing this, is it just checking the size of the OF db and not each task individually?

If they both are different, prompt me in some form or fashion to combine data or pick one or the other. Unless its just a DB sync, not a task by task sync.

Each zip file is a batch of changes that may affect one or more actions, projects, and contexts. If syncing is frequent and smooth, you can actually get down to one zip file.

The dialog occurs when there are local and server changes and the server changes happened before the local changes. They may not directly conflict, but then again they might. Right now OmniFocus doesn't try to be smart, but simply reloads all its zip files in chronological order.

I guess my take on it is: why would you ever choose to reopen the database later? If you don't do it right away, aren't you working with stale data and putting yourself at risk of potentially significant data loss later on?

And if you're always going to choose "reopen now" (which is what I do), then the app might as well do it automatically without asking.

So I like the new approach. Unless there's some good reason I might want to delay the reopening, I say let the app handle it.

-Dennis

Hopefully that Wi Fi Synch you're working on will help ;)

Good luck...keep up the great work...

WiFi sync won't help. But we do have a separate plan to improve this, after we get the WiFi sync happy.