[whpalmer4]

Originally Posted by Leila

There is a series of check boxes in the middle of the window. The list includes: 1) focus 2) layout 3) expansion, and 4) selection.

I'm having trouble understanding these check boxes. I think my perspectives have all checked, but I'm not positive. My guess is that it is referring to whether the screen is "focused" or not -or- whether the lists are "expanded" or not, etc...

• Focus
  If this box is checked, when the perspective is opened, the focus will be restored to what it was when you created the perspective. This allows you to do things like make a perspective focused on a selection or folder of projects, perhaps all of your work-related projects, or all of your personal projects, which will only show the tasks from those projects when you go to context mode.
  
• Layout
  If this box is checked, OmniFocus will restore the layout of the window (window size, width of sidebar, column width, etc.) to what it was when you created the perspective.
  
• Expansion
  If this box is checked, OmniFocus will open and close any groups, folders, etc. to match how they were when you created the perspective. This is useful for creating a "Due Today" perspective, for example: you make a view in Context mode that is grouped by due and close all of the groups except the one for today. Save with Restore:Expansion checked and it will always hide all of those other actions whenever you bring up the perspective.
  
• Selection
  If this box is checked, OmniFocus restores the selection to what it was when you created the perspective. For example, a Context mode perspective might want specifically include or exclude the No Contexts portion, and a Project mode perspective might want to specifically include or exclude the Inbox.
  

However, I'm thinking that if you save a perspective with a certain focus -- why wouldn't you want it to show up like that the next time? If it wasn't focues on what you saved? ... then what would it focus on?

If you don't have the Restore:Focus box checked and you open a perspective, the focus that was in place prior to doing so will be retained. This can be good or bad. If you don't notice that you're still focused, and were expecting all of your data to be included but only some is, that could be a problem. On the other hand, if you've got a set of perspectives that you might wish to apply whether focused or not, this is good.

And why would someone want the expansion different that what they saved in the first place (unless they changed their mind, of course... and then they could re-memorize the perspective).

You might want a set of views that could be applied without disturbing the expansion, so that you could decide today you are working on the tasks due today, tomorrow, and in the next week, flipping through them with your various perspectives without having to continually reopen or close groups as you would if the perspectives were set to restore expansion with different groups open. Tomorrow you might feel differently and only want to see the tasks due tomorrow.

Does that help? You can also look at the help in OmniFocus for Using perspectives to store your OmniFocus window settings (there are a few things I didn't touch on here).