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Using clipping with OmniOutliner Thread Tools Search this Thread Display Modes
I take meeting notes in Omni Outliner. So there will be a list of action items in that list.

The intuitive way to get those action items into OF (one would think) would be to highlight the text and clip.

Well, what happens is the highlighted text shows up in the notes section of the OF action and the action is then of the form <From OmniOutliner - filename> where 'filename' is the filename of the file. This is bad.

In the notes field is also a link to the file. This is good.

Anyhow, this is pretty screwed up.

J.
 
You can copy and paste whole chunks of your OmniOutliner doc with the standard copy/paste method, which seems more convenient than clipping in this scenario, at least the way I take notes. I agree that clipping from OO needs some work.
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by whpalmer4 View Post
You can copy and paste whole chunks of your OmniOutliner doc with the standard copy/paste method, which seems more convenient than clipping in this scenario, at least the way I take notes. I agree that clipping from OO needs some work.
Seems to me it ought to be consistent across software.

J.
 
This has been bugging me for a long time.

When I use the Clip-o-tron it works ok in email using the email title as the action item. That works ok because of the nature of emails - typically the issue is in the subject and the email is contained in the notes field.

however, if I clip from another application, that algorithm doesn't work. For example, I use Notebook from Circus Ponies for my note taking. Say for instance, I take some notes in a customer meeting and there is an action item. I highlight the action item and do the Clip-o-tron shorty cut. What shows up in OF is the action "From Notebook" and the selected text in the note. You can see that that is just not useful. If I make 10 clips, I get 10 apparently similar actions.

It needs to be the other way around - clipping puts the SELECTED TEXT into the action item and the URL to the file in the note.

J.
 
Agreed.
 
Good point! One problem with the proposed approach with larger clippings, though. If you clipped a thread from iChat that you needed to follow up on, or a couple of paragraphs from webmail, you'd have a massive block of text in your task list.

When I'm clipping from an app that doesn't have a specific clipping plug in, I just quickly edit the task name in the Quick Entry window, or during my next review of the inbox.

Rambling aside, email the support ninjas and we can get this in the development database for you - thanks!
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Brian View Post
One problem with the proposed approach with larger clippings, though. If you clipped a thread from iChat that you needed to follow up on, or a couple of paragraphs from webmail, you'd have a massive block of text in your task list.
I agree with Brian on this one. That's exactly what I do most of the time: select large-ish portions of text that I want sent to the note field of the new OF action and then type in my own title.

I'm all for some kind of smarter action title (although I'm not sure what that might be), but using the current selection isn't practical with my workflow.

-Dennis
 
Well, if you have to "quickly edit the task name" you might have just as well typed it in anyhow. Little is gained. I mean, it approaches a "don't care" sort of feature then.

The method that apple uses for creating todos in mail.app works very well and should be prototypical for most of this. UI is a core competency for Apple.

If the clipping is large, then ask or make it a preference (big text in the note or big text in the title).

If text is selected, then use the text. If an object is selected, then into the note or as an attachment.

Right now, unless there is a plug in, I'd say the clipping is fairly non-functional. Apps with plug ins, I'd say work well.


J.
 
It looks like there are a set of applescripts that do the clipping function, if you root around in the application package.
 
I love the Clip-o-tron but it's driving me nuts.

Take OmniOutliner for example. I highlight some text and clipped text goes in the note and the file name goes in the main title. It should be the other way around.

Actual example:
  1. I take notes in a meeting including all the action items.
  2. I go through the file later to add my actiion items to Omnifocus. So I use the clip-o-tron to highlight the action and then clip it.
  3. Each of the clipped items has the name of the file and the actual action item in the notes.
  4. This leaves me with a lot of action items that are all the same and I have to open the notes to see what is differnet.

In other words, it's backwards.

Does that make sense?

J.
 
 


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