[whpalmer4]

Originally Posted by morkafur

What I would expect (need) from the software (as Things does it) is that if I schedule a task's start date, a tasks end date, and a repeat frequency, that that task will show up in the "Due" prospective when it's within the number of dates from the Due Date (as configured in preferences).

But that's *not* what you did. You are reading "due date" and seeing "end date" and it is little surprise that the results don't match your expectations.

"Start date" = first day you can work on this task, or first day you want to see it presented as available
"Due date" = date by which this task should be completed. Not to be confused with the termination of a repeating task! OmniFocus repeating tasks repeat endlessly.

You set up a task with a start date of a few days ago and a due date at the end of October, repeating daily. That means your task is shown as available for action any time after a few days ago, and at the end of October will be marked as overdue if not completed. The daily repeat means that when you mark that task completed, another copy will be made with the start and due dates adjusted by 1 day.

Usually, a repeating task where the time between start and due is ≫ the repeat interval is a mistake, but not always. For example: I want to refill the water fountain used by my cats. It holds water sufficient for 2-3 days, so I put the start date this morning and the due date tomorrow afternoon, with a start again after 1 day. Most of the time I'll do it on the day it appears as a newly started action, but if I don't, the due date the next day will catch it before it runs out. I could just set up a task that repeats every 2 days, but this approach gets me a bigger margin of safety. It's hard to imagine a case where what you specified to OmniFocus (task starting today, due in 5 months, repeating daily) would be desirable, though!

So, for a daily task, there should be a Due task each day for this (daily frequency) task.

Each time you complete the task, the new one is created. OmniFocus allows you to decide whether the new one is scheduled based on when the old one was scheduled, or when it was completed. If you are getting the lawn mowed or your hair cut, you want the next one to be based on when you last completed it (start again or due again). In other cases, where it not only matters when, but how many times you do something, you might choose to use repeat every.

From these postings here on the forum, OF doesn't appear to work this way but I'm not about to change my needs to adapt to a methodology or to this software.

The Start date in OmniFocus is Things' "show in Today x days before" except that OmniFocus allows you to view those actions conveniently even before that date (by showing Remaining actions) whereas Things appears to make you look through your scheduled actions and work out whether any of them fall in your window of interest.

I'm not attempting to convince you to prefer OmniFocus; if you prefer Things, you should use it. I find it usually works better if I understand my choices, though often the understanding comes only after choosing :-)