[MacBerry]

Originally Posted by Toadling

That preference setting means that the "clean up operation" simply should process items with a project and a context, not that it should necessarily process them immediately. On my system, this seems to be working as designed.

As designed yes, but not correctly IMHO. The constant "did you really mean to do that?" implied by the way OF does things is hugely distracting. For me the simple question is; do I click incorrectly more often than I click correctly? If I do, then it makes sense not to hide completions, but if I don't it's simply an unnecessary distraction, given that we're not talking about anything that's not recoverable. And it's very un-GTD in principle too. it's not very "mind like water" to have something I've already dealt with hanging about.

Originally Posted by Toadling

I think you might be misunderstanding. The goal of the "clean up on demand" approach is not to allow people to keep completed actions around indefinitely, but rather to avoid having completed actions suddenly disappear as soon as you click them, like a rug being yanked out from beneath your feet.

No I understand the thinking perfectly, which is why I suggest an option not a change. When we tackled this issue on the Pocket Informant beta group, because the default was to have the task disappear as soon as it was checked, people were amazed how effective it was to simply add a short delay (less than one second) to avoid that feeling of having the rug pulled that you describe. Those that wanted it around so they could still work on it didn't filter completed tasks out, and everyone was content!

Originally Posted by Toadling

In my view, having checked items immedaitely disappear can be very disorienting. Did I check the right one? Where did it suddenly go? What if I wanted to modify or copy the notes after checking the item off?

Then don't filter out completed actions!!!! That's my point - if I've told OF I don't want to see them, I DON'T WANT TO SEE THEM!

Originally Posted by Toadling

Besides, according to the manual, OmniFocus *does* clean up automatically, it just occurs on a delayed schedule (from page 29):

If, as the manual suggests, it's accepted that it's untidy to keep them around too long, it's accepted that it IS untidy. The debate is then only about how long a user should tolerate that for. I find it distracting after 1 second max, as after that I want to be thinking about the next action, not wondering why the task I just completed is still bugging me, and clicking clean up to make it do what I've already instructed it to do.

Also I don't know how that schedule works, but if it's just the equivalent of "click cleanup every 30 minutes" for example, it's surely even more disorienting for you, as you never quite know when something's going to disappear for no apparent reason. It might even go while you're in the middle of that copy procedure ;)

Originally Posted by Toadling

However, I guess I'd be open to a preference setting that determines how soon an action is "auto-cleaned" after being marked as complete (or at least a hidden default setting).

Thank you. I've never understood why people argue against options that let others work the way they want to, while still letting you work the way you want. Yes if a way already exists to do what the requester is asking for, point that out, sure, but why would anyone argue that I shouldn't be allowed to work my way?

All it needs is a simple "clean up immediately" check box. A user configurable delay would be nice, but I can tell you from experience that if they're not given that option, users will never miss it so long as there IS a minimal delay of say 0.5 secs, during which the task is struck out.

Originally Posted by Toadling

The difference here is that when you hit return in Word, it doesn't make the previos paragraph suddenly disappear. All content is still visible and easily corrected - which wouldn't always be the case if actions immediately disappeared when completed in OmniFocus.

Word wasn't a very good example, but the principal stands - if I tell an application to do something (hide completed tasks in this case), it should do it. The importance of that action to me is for me to decide, not for OG to second guess.

And, even if I was arguing for you to be forced to have the app behave like nearly all other such apps, and how I need it to work (which I'm not), why would it be so difficult to find a completed task and correct the issue, on the rare occasions when you do get it wrong? It's not as if we're talking about deletions here.