[m.wrenn]

I tried this out, and though it's a little slow, it's fairly flexible and serves as a good half measure for tagging in OmniFocus as it is . . . and it uses onboard functionality.

The key is using uncommon symbols or symbol combinations, OF search and Perspectives. This is really pretty smooth.

Say I have several franchises running at the same time. They each have rather different projects, each one running along at a different pace. Some of these projects are getting ready to ramp up for production, so in the related task or project notes field I put a "$" sign. Makes sense, it's a project ramping up for production, so it needs money. I know I will have to call the bank and maybe my key investor sometime soon, and I need to know some total numbers across each of these productions.

I do a search on "$" in the search field. Everything with "$" floats up, I move to the menu bar and save the search as a Perspective.

Now, I am not exactly sure how this works, but it seems OF saves the actual search as the Perspective. This is great! It means that adding or subtracting "$" anywhere in a task or project's field affects whether is shows up next time you call up that Perspective. One project had to be pulled off the slate? No problem, delete it's "$". It won't show up next time you call that Perspective.

You need a good and consistent system for labeling projects and tasks this way. A little patience will be necessary, too, because the Perspective apparently carries out a fresh search each time you call it up (I guess . . . totally end user conjecture). Except for the slowness, I would be tempted to say there is no real need for a specific Tag feature.

If you don't like seeing strange marks floating in your title bars, put them in the note field. It still works just fine.

. . . If somebody mentioned this before, my apologies. After some looking around, I didn't notice this solution, so posted it.