[curt.clifton]

Originally Posted by macula

Excellent post from an "authoritative" voice :-) …

Thanks.

Let me say for what it's worth that, unlike you, I did not consider it "ad hoc that an incomplete action group in a sequential project would not block subsequent actions" in earlier versions of OF. Actually it seemed to me perfectly normal and intuitive, as well as conceptually sound. I never think of action groups as anything other than visual indentations in my list of actions required to complete a project. In that sense, I would ideally not even want a checkbox marking a group action as "completed." Does this make any sense to you?

I think so. You're using action groups as an organizational device, not necessarily as a device for controlling task dependencies.

I learned project management with GANTT charts back in my days as a project engineer in the manufacturing business. GANTT charts are all about task and resource dependencies. OmniFocus gives remarkably powerful control over task dependencies simply by combining the outlining metaphor with parallel and sequential groups. In fact, OF can handle any dependency scheme apart from those based on relative dates or resource balancing.

However, for these dependencies to work an action group in a sequential project needs to block the task that comes after the group. The pre-1.8 solution that I called ad hoc, limited the power of action groups as a dependency mechanism. The only work around was an external script.

This aside, assuming that the verdict is final and projects/action groups will now be actionable, I am in favor of your suggestion. It seems pretty much what I also suggested as an alternative solution in my post #66 above.

Ah, yes. I see that now. I was thrown off the scent by calling that new bin a "context". I think treating it as a separate bin, between No Context and Contexts in the sidebar would be clearer. It also allows a user to just click on Contexts in the sidebar and hide all action groups and projects, which seems more discoverable than a separate preference.