Problems with like-named projects
 

In recent releases, quick selection of projects doesn't work correctly when different folders have projects with the same name.

For example, I have a folder named "Advance and propagate knowledge of computing" and one called "Help manage our household". Each folder contains a list of single actions called "Singleton actions". In the Inbox, if I enter "housesing" in the project column, I appropriately get "Help manage our household • Singleton actions" as the project. But after I press Return twice to get out of entry mode, the project for the item is "Advance and propagate knowledge of computing • Singleton actions". This is confirmed both by hovering over the project column and by where the action goes when I clean up.

This same problem exists for sub-contexts; I reported that separately some time ago.

These bugs are extremely frustrating as they seriously erode the trustworthiness of my system. I can rename my projects and contexts to be unique, but that shouldn't be necessary.

Is anyone else seeing this behavior, or is it perhaps a legacy problem for a long-time alpha tester?

[SIZE="1"][COLOR="Gray"][Submitted as formal feedback][/COLOR][/SIZE]

Curt, I'm seeing the problem too. I have a "Miscellany" single-action bucket which used to live in my "Organizing" folder. I have another single-action bucket called "GPD Miscellany" in my "GPD" folder. Many a time I entered an action and then typed "orgmisc" to specify the "Organizing : Miscellany" project, only to tab forward and find that the project was "GPD Miscellany".

If, instead of typing the project name, I used the popup menu to explicitly select the correct project, it would display properly until I tabbed out of the project field, at which point it would be replaced by the incorrect project.

I found that moving the "Miscellany" project to the top level in my Library solved the problem. Moving it into another folder produced a similar problem, except that a different Miscellany project was selected.

In my unsystematic test, the problem seems to arise when projects have similar names but are in different folders.

I suppose it could be a legacy problem for me, too, since I've been testing for a while. I just tried recreating it with the latest build in a new user account, and I didn't get the same bug. But I only tested for a few minutes.

What happens if you create a new single-action bucket called "Singleton actions" in the top level of your Library? Does that quash the bug?

[All but the last paragraph submitted as formal feedback.]

[QUOTE=brianogilvie;25757]
What happens if you create a new single-action bucket called "Singleton actions" in the top level of your Library? Does that quash the bug?[/QUOTE]

I've given up on the bug and just renamed my Singleton actions to add a short, folder-specific suffix.

Yes, I just noticed this too. I have "general" singleton projects in each of my major categories, and the same thing happens: I do quick entry, enough to get the "general" project and I see that it's the correct one from its project prefix, but when I accept it, it goes into the "general" bucket for a different project.

Hopefully a simple fix, Omni folks?

I have "singletons" for work and the spanish "unos" for home.

This is certainly a bug that should be squashed, but my 2 cents is on how useful I have found it to have more explicit singleton category names. I too use folders as areas of responsibility (e.g., Teacher, Homeowner, etc.). I have named my singleton buckets "sing teacher," "sing homeowner," and so on. The advantage here is that when assigning projects, I can type the role and "sing" in either order and it goes to the right place:
singteach matches teacher>>SING TEACHer
teachsing matches TEACHer>>SING teacher
Not worrying about the order of those two facts (that it is a singleton, and to which area it belongs) when entering an action inches me closer to mind like water.

[QUOTE=Craig;25767]This is certainly a bug that should be squashed, but my 2 cents is on how useful I have found it to have more explicit singleton category names. I too use folders as areas of responsibility (e.g., Teacher, Homeowner, etc.). I have named my singleton buckets "sing teacher," "sing homeowner," and so on.[/QUOTE]

I had done that too, but I put the unique part of each name before the Miscellany, so I had "GPD Miscellany," "Teaching Miscellany," "Scholarly Miscellany," etc., and one "Miscellany" for things that really were not categorizable. I still found that things would get misfiled.

This is hopefully fixed in the 94992 build, which will be posted in about half an hour. If you still notice any problems in that build or later, please let us know!

Thank you - it's working now for me! I too had been noticing this bug for a long time. I mainly noticed it in the QuickEntry window and had reported the bug a couple months ago.

Ken--thanks! It's working fine for me now.