[curt.clifton]

Originally Posted by brianogilvie

OT: Does Rose-Hulman still send the Tinkertoys brochure to prospective applicants?

The admissions brochure is Lego blocks now. The classic Ski Terre Haute poster has also been retired, but the Student Alumni Association earns some extra money selling reproductions to nostalgia hounds.

[maverator]

Originally Posted by anna

At the same level? That means not in a context list and with no handy-dandy checkbox to mark it complete and clear it from view. How would you ever know to do it?

If you can have single actions and actual projects co-existing in the same application, I would think you could have them co-exist in the same level of whatever hierarchy the software is presenting to us visually. Maybe not as it currently functions, but that shouldn't be an argument against this type of organization since it could always be implemented.

Of course I have no idea of how technically difficult that might actually be, so no way of knowing if this would be a minor tweak or a major overhaul.

[Ken Case]

We considered a few other names before landing on "Library": one of the other choices was "Plans", but we didn't want to introduce yet another term requiring that people understand the non-obvious relationship between plans and other things (i.e., that "plans" would have been a generic term for both projects and lists of single actions).

We decided to go with Library because that's what Apple's apps use in their sidebars, but I understand the objections and would welcome a better term. We're really talking about lists of planned actions, so "Lists" and "Planned Actions" are some terms I've considered.

On a related note, we're planning to rename Project Mode to Planning Mode.

Originally Posted by pjb

"Library" is not collapsable so it's not even functional and if Inbox were not in that space then a header would not be necessary.

If you review Ethan's screencasts, you'll notice that we originally didn't have a header. We didn't add the header because we wanted to come up with a term to describe all the contents (or to make it collapsible; I'm not sure what the utility of that would be when it has no peers following it), but to solve a specific UI problem:

The problem in question (which we got a lot of feedback about) was that there wasn't an intuitive way to show the contents of all your projects—um, library—at once, which is a very common thing to want to do. We needed a mechanism for resetting the sidebar's selection, and the most intuitive way we could find to do that was to add a root-level header to the sidebar.

(Not that there weren't already several ways to reset the selection in the sidebar: you could deselect everything if you understood that Command-Click toggles the selection, or you could click on the empty space at the end of the sidebar if there was any, or you could click on the separator between the inbox and the rest of the list. But none of them were obvious, so unsurprisingly people weren't figuring them out.)

[Ken Case]

Originally Posted by Mario.Batz@cern.ch

But may be Omni is planning on something else before the last day of creation, that would perfectly fit in a Library? May be .... project models/templates, references/links (showing all your links in a sort of smart folder, smart folders - yes that would be great

Oh: there are more things planned, as it happens, but not for 1.0. (We want to finish the features we've already started!)

[petro]

Originally Posted by al_f

<snip>
I'd rather see a "Planning view" structure of:

Inbox
Projects
Single actions

So the hardest challenge I've had with OF so far is the massive vocabulary you have to learn just to get started. And I'm feeling more and more like I *have* to read David Allen's GTD to use the app.

Why do we need projects / folders / actions and singletons? Why have an "Inbox" or a Library/Projects folder? If the UI is flexible enough, someone could setup their own Inbox, or singleton folders or projects on the fly. Just add a few options you can choose to each folder like whether the tasks have to be completed in order, etc.

Seems MattArmstrong has the same views, coming from using Life Balance or in my case MyLifeOrganized (which is an evolution of Life Balance, but a Windows app only).

I think MattArmstrong summed it up in this thread:
http://forums.omnigroup.com/showthread.php?t=4638

[curt.clifton]

Originally Posted by petro

So the hardest challenge I've had with OF so far is the massive vocabulary you have to learn just to get started. And I'm feeling more and more like I *have* to read David Allen's GTD to use the app.

Why do we need projects / folders / actions and singletons? Why have an "Inbox" or a Library/Projects folder? If the UI is flexible enough, someone could setup their own Inbox, or singleton folders or projects on the fly. Just add a few options you can choose to each folder like whether the tasks have to be completed in order, etc.

The UI in OmniOutliner is flexible enough to set up all those things. That's why many of use were using it for GTD-like systems and why Ethan built kGTD on top of it. The problem was that such an application felt "bolted on" and wasn't as snappy as it needed to be for true GTD nirvana.

OmniFocus was developed to provide a GTD app from the bottom up. That it is useful for people using other approaches is great, but taking away the Inbox and Projects would make OF not useful for GTD. That would obviate OmniFocus's reason for being. I think one really does need to read Allen's book to use OF to its full potential. I also don't think that's a bad thing. Heck, the book likely costs a third or less of what the application will cost. I've recommended the book to many people, most of whom are still wallowing in Windows. Reading it is a very good investment, even if you don't ultimately use OmniFocus.

Have you tried OmniOutliner? If OF is too complex or isn't flexible enough for you, OmniOutliner Pro might be just the thing. OmniOutliner is a terrific application, and it might be a better match to what you want. I migrated to OmniOutliner from Life Balance and found it to be an improvement. (Though I'm not shy about writing AppleScripts, and I spun several dozen of them to customize OO to my liking.)

[petro]

Originally Posted by curt.clifton

The UI in OmniOutliner is flexible enough to set up all those things. That's why many of use were using it for GTD-like systems and why Ethan built kGTD on top of it. The problem was that such an application felt "bolted on" and wasn't as snappy as it needed to be for true GTD nirvana.

OmniFocus was developed to provide a GTD app from the bottom up. That it is useful for people using other approaches is great, but taking away the Inbox and Projects would make OF not useful for GTD. That would obviate OmniFocus's reason for being. I think one really does need to read Allen's book to use OF to its full potential. I also don't think that's a bad thing. Heck, the book likely costs a third or less of what the application will cost. I've recommended the book to many people, most of whom are still wallowing in Windows. Reading it is a very good investment, even if you don't ultimately use OmniFocus.

Have you tried OmniOutliner? If OF is too complex or isn't flexible enough for you, OmniOutliner Pro might be just the thing. OmniOutliner is a terrific application, and it might be a better match to what you want. I migrated to OmniOutliner from Life Balance and found it to be an improvement. (Though I'm not shy about writing AppleScripts, and I spun several dozen of them to customize OO to my liking.)

Thanks Curt. I'll have to check out OmniOutliner. But Applescripts and OO doesn't sound like something that will be better than my current task manager program.

I think you missed my point though. I'm not saying that OF should do without projects and an Inbox. I'm saying if you take a look at programs like Life Balance or MyLifeOrganized, you can have projects, you can have task lists, you can have an inbox, projects can be in parallel or serial, you can have a folder of singletons, all without the complexity and steep learning curve of OF's vocabulary. I'm not saying those programs are better, hence why I'm voicing my opinion in the hopes I'll get the ultimate app.

Going back to this thread, I could care less if it's called Projects or Library. I just find the current format of creating a hierarchy time consuming and confusing. I'm trying to point out a simpler way, that could potentially give the GTD purists what they want, but give enough flexibility for those who aren't sticklers who adopt GTD 100% (like myself). My ideal is GTD plus priority. And I think the app has an overly steep learning curve as it stands right now.

Maybe I'm reading too much in to the web page description of OmniFocus which says "OmniFocus can be used to implement the "Getting Things Done®" work-life management method developed by David Allen, but it's designed to be flexible enough to accommodate different styles of personal organization."

I do appreciate the dialogs back and forth with everyone in this group. So don't please interpret it as critical comments about OF. I love many things about the product, and I'd love for it to replace my current app.

[pjb]

Originally Posted by Ken Case

...We needed a mechanism for resetting the sidebar's selection...But none of them were obvious, so unsurprisingly people weren't figuring them out.)

I may have been one of those people. There wasn't/isn't always free space below the list of Projects and buckets.

Anyway, I like "Plans" over "Library" for the section header. Maybe it could be collapsable now in advance of the goodies to come (like Shared Plans, maybe?).

[curt.clifton]

Originally Posted by petro

I think you missed my point though. I'm not saying that OF should do without projects and an Inbox. I'm saying if you take a look at programs like Life Balance or MyLifeOrganized, you can have projects, you can have task lists, you can have an inbox, projects can be in parallel or serial, you can have a folder of singletons, all without the complexity and steep learning curve of OF's vocabulary. I'm not saying those programs are better, hence why I'm voicing my opinion in the hopes I'll get the ultimate app.

I had missed that point, with which I largely agree. I do think that the Inbox needs to be a special thing. It's where, in the GTD methodology, I can just dump ideas so that I don't lose them and they don't interrupt my current work. (Are you using the QuickEntry window to capture ideas?) But I think that everything under Library (or whatever it's ultimately called) could probably be "made of the same stuff". The has been discussed quite a bit on the forums. Search for "subproject" or "action group", for example.

[petro]

Originally Posted by curt.clifton

I had missed that point, with which I largely agree. I do think that the Inbox needs to be a special thing. It's where, in the GTD methodology, I can just dump ideas so that I don't lose them and they don't interrupt my current work. (Are you using the QuickEntry window to capture ideas?) But I think that everything under Library (or whatever it's ultimately called) could probably be "made of the same stuff". The has been discussed quite a bit on the forums. Search for "subproject" or "action group", for example.

Thanks Curt. I only got invited recently as an alpha tester so I've probably missed out on tons of discussions. I'll start going back and reading old threads to catch up.

QuickEntry is one of those fantastic features that makes me really want to switch over to OF. And I love the concept of the Inbox as a holding bin for ideas not yet sorted. I literally use TextEdit now for that need. Hokey, but it's quick.

A side question on the Inbox though. Must I drag actions out of the inbox to move them to folders/projects? I keep thinking that if I assign a project to an entry in the inbox, it'll auto-move it. Why have the ability to tie a project and context to entries in the inbox? Am I missing something?

-pete