[ksrhee]

Originally Posted by Ken Case

Today's sneaky peeks update the implementation of stalled for both project and context modes:

Projects are now considered stalled when they are active but have no remaining actions.

Contexts are no longer considered stalled when they contain an actionable project or group.

Thank you! This is something I've been pushing for in the past. I always wanted the stalled filter to identify only active projects that do not have any remaining actions. In other words, I never considered projects stalled if it had an action that is available in the future-it is actually in process or in progress. It just means I don't have to act on something today.

Who says your wish cannot be fulfilled.

Originally Posted by Ken Case

Projects are now considered stalled when they are active but have no remaining actions.

Contexts are no longer considered stalled when they contain an actionable project or group.

I like the clarity and simplicity of these updated definitions.

If I have properly understood, this leaves us with something like:

projects where (number of tasks is number of completed tasks) and (status is active) and ((hidden of its folder is false) or (its folder is missing value)) and (singleton action holder is false)

and

contexts where (available task count is 0) and (allows next action is true) and (hidden is false)

A PS:

The only remaining glitch (or obstacle to simple translation between filter drop-down settings and search language clauses) is that while nested contexts and nested folders inherit their hidden/dropped status from their enclosing ancestors in the graphic user interface, they do not currently inherit their corresponding .hidden property in the applescript library.

In other words the following will currently list as not dropped/hidden any child contexts and parents which are in fact dropped because their enclosing parent folders/contexts are dropped.

-- Currently reports hidden contexts and folders as not hidden 
-- (if their hidden status is inherited from enclosing ancestors)
tell application "OmniFocus"
	-- OF 1.8 only
	tell front document
		set lstContextNames to name of flattened contexts where hidden is false
		set lstFolderNames to name of flattened folders where hidden is false
	end tell
end tell

(I have reported this as an issue/bug)

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[Ken Case]

For the next sneaky peek, we've added an "effectively hidden" property to folders and contexts which tests whether the item or one of its ancestors is hidden.

Originally Posted by Ken Case

For the next sneaky peek, we've added an "effectively hidden" property to folders and contexts which tests whether the item or one of its ancestors is hidden.

Thank you ! The speed and quality of the applescript developments in these sneaky peek builds has been really impressive ... It has made a huge difference to my ability to find things quickly and build a clear view of what's going on across the whole database.

The new "effectively hidden" property is working well, and

projects where (number of tasks is number of completed tasks) and (status is active) and (singleton action holder is false) and ((effectively hidden of its folder is false) or (its folder is missing value))

now looks as if it is giving exactly the same results as the stalled project filter in my database (with the current build of OF 1.8), while

contexts where (available task count is 0) and (allows next action is true) and (effectively hidden is false)

also appears to be giving the same set of matches as the stalled context filter.

I personally find it very helpful to have a clearer sense now of what the built-in filters are really showing (and it provides a good basis for writing slightly customized searches too).

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[whpalmer4]

Originally Posted by RobTrew

Thank you !

That's very helpful, and an impressive exercise in inductive reasoning :-)

The four words defining stalled projects in the help file ("without any available actions") probably do need a bit of expansion. They don't reveal much of what the filter really does, let alone of the distinction between it and the applescript library's number of available tasks is 0

Your draft query already reveals much more, and I am empirically getting the same results as stalled (in my database, and this morning's build of OF 1.8) by expanding your search to include active projects which simply lack any kind of task at all, and restricting it to exclude singleton holders. Thus, in applescript, the fairly baroque:

projects where status is active and ((number of tasks is 0) or ((its number of tasks > its number of completed tasks) and (its number of available tasks is 0))) and singleton action holder is false and ((hidden of its folder is false) or (its folder is missing value))

or in English, for the help file, something like:

"Active projects which have no tasks, or which have remaining tasks which are unavailable. (Does not include empty single action lists, or projects in dropped folders)."

I can see the value of the 'stalled' filter, and I might be more inclined to make use of it now that (I think) I understand it, but I suspect that I will personally be sticking with simpler and clearer filters for my own day to day work :-)

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Rob,

further investigation reveals that the following seems to be a more accurate description of the 1.7.5 Stalled filter:

projects where status is active and ((number of tasks is 0) or ((its number of completed tasks ≤ its number of tasks) and (its number of available tasks is 0))) and singleton action holder is false and ((hidden of its folder is false) or (its folder is missing value)) and ((its start date is missing value) or (start date ≤ today))

Your characterization of "fairly baroque" is fairly applied, I think :-)

Originally Posted by whpalmer4

Further investigation reveals that the following seems to be a more accurate description of the 1.7.5 Stalled filter:

projects where status is active and ((number of tasks is 0) or ((its number of completed tasks ≤ its number of tasks) and (its number of available tasks is 0))) and singleton action holder is false and ((hidden of its folder is false) or (its folder is missing value)) and ((its start date is missing value) or (start date ≤ today))

Your characterization of "fairly baroque" is fairly applied, I think :-)

Excellent ! That does look more like it.

Perhaps I should add an abbreviation to Where in OF for people who want reproduce the older list ? What would one call it ? [OldStalled] ? [1.7.5-Stalled] ?

(I'm personally happy with the simpler version in OF 1.8, though I can see why some found the old version useful, and I can quite understand a sense of transitional alarm at finding that a familiar element of a toolkit has changed).

Does it look to you as if the OF 1.8 stalled is properly captured by:

[Stalled-projects]->((number of tasks is number of completed tasks) and (status is active) and (singleton action holder is false) and ((effectively hidden of its folder is false) or (its folder is missing value)))

?

(I did ask the support Ninjas whether they could persuade anyone in Omni to check the draft interpretations of the OF 1.8 filters, but I think everyone is a bit too busy for that to register as a priority at the moment).

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