[whpalmer4]

Originally Posted by A to the B

Hi All,
1st post here. And 1st apple script late last night... It would be awesome if someone said "Hey, your reinventing the wheel here. Just follow this link."

Welcome! Now why would you want someone else's script when you could have the satisfaction of building your own? :)

Here are the issues I am working through:
-The resulting OmniOutliner file looks like the txt file (of course) but with many columns (and no outlining?). Is there a preferred way to format a txt file so that OO opens it and sees an outline and not just a 2d string array?

I don't know how you could structure a text file to tell OmniOutliner to build an indented outline from it. I would probably just convert the Applescript you're using to make the text file to build the structure in OmniOutliner directly. When you have a chance to post your code, I'll have a look at it and see what I can suggest. Others with more substantial Applescript chops may chime in as well.

-OF brings everything in flat and doesn't recognize the project attribute (also flat-ish in OO hmmm, pg. 50 in the OO manual talks about out-denting... is there something here I am missing?)

Yeah, you can select a row (or rows) in OO and indent it with cmd-] or the Reorganize->Indent command. That will establish an outline structure, and OF will honor that structure during import.

-My durations go straight to metadata instead of the duration field (this could be my naming convention: 5min, 15min, 30min, 1h, 2h, 1d. What naming conventions are supported/recognized?)

The underlying problem seems to be that the importer is broken -- I'm not able to get it to understand start/due dates or durations. I've filed a report.

-The notes show up but with a "Metadata: " string prepended to them. Any way to write directly to the notes object?

Yes, if you use an Applescript to do it. Given that the importer seems to have some troubles with dates and durations, if you were already going to the trouble of making an script that wrote an OmniOutliner file to be imported and cared about dates and durations, one might as well just tell OmniFocus to build the rows directly. Too busy trying to convert this to a previously solved problem to take a step back and think of that before!

-I guess "Metadata: Priority: High" is fine. What do you use to set H M L priorities in your OF setup?

I don't. I'm not a believer in putting on priority labels. I'll flag things and use start and due dates to manage the list as needed. One thing I've suggested in the past for people who want such a thing is repurposing the Duration field as a priority field. Make 1-5m your highest priority group, 6-15m your next priority group, etc. following the steps in the duration filter. Set the duration filter to 5 min and you'll only see your highest priority items. Set it to 15 minutes and you see the top two groups. Also sort by duration and you can have various shadings in each group.