Checking and un-checking items creates duplicates
 

I have found what appears to be an anomaly in OF. Sometimes when I accidently check a recurring 'ToDo' as complete and then uncheck it because I haven't completed it yet, the item will duplicate itself for the next period.

So let's say that I have a recurring 'ToDo' to backup my computer every Saturday, and accidently check it off as complete because I meant to check the item above it. So I uncheck it until I do complete it. Then next Saturday I will have the exact same 'ToDo' appear twice. So I delete one of the 'ToDos' and everything is okay again.

I wanted to report this in case anyone else has noticed this anomaly, and so that OF team is aware of this.

Yes, I see this too, but hadn't associated it with checking and unchecking an item.

This occurs because marking a repeating action complete is what tells OmniFocus to generate the new action. If you hit Undo (Command-Z), you'll uncheck the action AND get rid of the duplicate action in one fell swoop.

Thank you Brian. I did not know that. And thank you for the keyboard command.

I didn't realize that either (that undo would work). But this seems like a hole in the UI. Surely the intent of the user is not to duplicate his or her actions in this situation. Perhaps the new item shouldn't be created until the user hits "Clean Up" equivalent.

What Brian said before is correct. Undo is the way to go here.

While we could try to write a whole bunch of code that did 'the right thing' if you checked and then unchecked an action, it would be prone to doing the wrong thing in edge cases, and it would be duplicating existing Apple code that they've spent years refining.

It's just not the best use of engineering time.

If the new action weren't created until "Clean Up" (or equivalent) was performed, that wouldn't duplicate Apple code or be prone to doing the wrong thing in edge cases, it would be more consistent with how OF works in general, and it would avoid the most common case of inadvertently duplicating actions.

[QUOTE=Chris;34763]If the new action weren't created until "Clean Up" (or equivalent) was performed, that wouldn't duplicate Apple code or be prone to doing the wrong thing in edge cases, it would be more consistent with how OF works in general, and it would avoid the most common case of inadvertently duplicating actions.[/QUOTE]

Hmm, I'm not convinced. I think that approach could be more confusing than the current behavior: Why isn't my "Repeat on Completion" task repeating when completed?

I don't know, maybe I'm just already used to the current way.

I think the current behavior is confusing in one small case - when you check something you didn't mean to. Otherwise, it meets the behavior that most folks expect. Folks complete actions that they meant to check off a lot more frequently than they do ones that they didn't mean to.

If we traded the current behavior for one where completing the action didn't cause the next one to appear immediately, we'd cause more confusion than we'd remove. Folks would look at the new behavior and think that repeating actions were completely busted. We'd also annoy everyone that was used to the way the app worked up until the change.

I don't think either behavior being discussed is particularly intuitive, but they're both learnable. What we don't want to do is make the one that happens more often the one that folks need to learn how to use.

Edit: I fail at grammar.