[curt.clifton]

Mark,

Thanks for sharing your design idea. I delayed in responding so I could ponder it a bit.

I think the intent of the current OF design was to strongly segregate planning from doing. I also think it's likely that the current design reflects OF's conceptual heritage from Kinkless in OmniOutliner, where the context views were generated by transforming the main project-based organization of the data.

That said, I don't see any major problems with your proposal and agree that such a design would allow greater customization. I do wonder whether it would be more or less confusing to novice users. I think a larger variety of built-in perspectives would go a long way to simplifying either design for novices. A second benefit is that the built-in perspectives would provide ready-made examples and starting points for custom perspectives.

Omni has mentioned that smart groups are coming someday. Perhaps a design like yours would be a good way to specify smart groups.