[Craig]

Originally Posted by curt.clifton

Select all (Cmd-a), then Expand Note (Cmd-').

This doesn't work for me for notes attached to projects (in planning mode). Anybody else having this problem?

[rmathes]

OK, evidently I'm being dense. But if I select a task and hit cmd -, it makes the font smaller. It doesn’t display the note.

I can’t find any keyboard shortcut to display notes.

Great discussion here, appreciate the different perspectives.

I can see why someone would view the iGTD layout as cluttered and distracting, especially if they use the Notes field less frequently or less as an integral part of task creation than do I. I can make arguments for both visual layouts, but what I'm finding at least so far is that I simply process tasks much faster in iGTD than in OF, in part because the data contained in Notes is right there in front of me.

If I can figure out the keyboard shortcut, perhaps that will help. And perhaps not.

[Craig]

Originally Posted by rmathes

OK, evidently I'm being dense. But if I select a task and hit cmd -, it makes the font smaller. It doesn’t display the note.

It's Command plus apostrophe (') that you want.

[rmathes]

thank you, sir.

Definitely makes it more tenable but still not sure I can live with this paradigm. Reading any one note of any length automatically means all other tasks are out of view, which I'm not accustomed to and don’t care for. Opening them all just makes the view absolutely unworkable.

May just be what I'm used to, but I really like the ‘Mail’ view paradigm of the side vertical bar, the top list and the bottom detail for each list entry. I’m used to working that way in Mail and other apps, and it just works for me. I understand it doesn’t for others. If I made less use of notes and didn’t have so many tasks that were email based, perhaps I'd feel differently.

[joelande]

With everybody having widescreen monitors these days, maybe there should be a note pane that can be activate to the right of the main window.

Like the preview pane in NetNews Wire

[eronel]

I can see how a note pane would be useful for wide screens. However ...

... I love my 12" PowerBook for its compactness. But widescreen it isn't. So I'd be opposed to a note pane if that was the only way to access notes.

[zackayak]

I'm thinking that an ideal solution for me would be a notes mode along with the planning and context modes.

It would be awesome to have my note taking app and my time planner be one and the same, just as a Day Planner ends up being a scribble pad and idea collector for your life.

I could start with a note, then assign it attributes of being part of a project or not. Some notes might just be stored tidbits forever. Right now, I use Mac Journal for most everything, and don't use a time planning app at all; just yellow stickies in my workplace or on the fridge.

Maybe I am envisioning something that will happen when Omnifocus is more closely tied to OmniOutliner.

Some of the posts here about all the various software tools people are using really have me wondering about the time and energy needed to learn each program and coordinate their work flow among them.

I really appreciate all the info you are posting about your personal work flows and the tools you are using.

Thank You,
Zack

[Maurice]

What i don't like about OF notes are the following two things:

1.) The way, document-icons are integrated: i would like them to be larger and with the filename positioned next to the icon, like in mail for example. The files should open with a double click rather than having to invoke the context menu.

2.) Inline displaying of pdf and image files: this is in my opinion the most annoying thing about notes in OF. I don't see what the benefit of this should be. I don't want to use OF as a pdf-viewer, there are a dozen other apps that are much more suiteable for that. if you expand a note containing pdfs or images the following actions are tossed out of the viewport and the note is using up almost the whole window. The note gets hard to read. I am not certain if a preview of the file is a good thing at all, maybe a thumbnail-image would be a good solution.

[j2blue]

Following this thread I have to agree with the original poster that it would be nice to "optionally" invoke a note preview pane that appears either below the list or to the side. Also, within the notes section I would like to see the ability to add resource links, not resources, as some people have requested. I don't think most people could tell the difference if they didn't get that. Of the many resource link types there should be the good old folder alias as I like to keep various documents related to a project/task in the folders provided by the OS.

This may be a tangent to some other posts I've read recently, but it may have a place in the discussion regarding notes, too. One resource link type could be used to associate scripts or programs that get launched. That would enable one to create a mail message from the task/action item using AppleScript, OF built-in commands, Ruby, Lisp, assembler, whatever. In the note for the same task another resource link to create a calendar event could be added, and even self modify to become the url to the created event! I might even create a "Shoes" app that gets launched from a resource link which opens a small window for altering the task as though it were a support ticket, and then send an update to the support tracking database via RSS/Atom. Providing such resource links means OmniFocus doesn't need to be all things to all people, just play nice with apps.

[Jeroen]

Originally Posted by jharrison

3. As I've said before, I commonly use links to files and folders on disk. The current handling of dragged-in links in the notes fields is inadequate.

I second that.
IMO it should be default behavior to link to a document when you drag it into a notes field (at least for non-text files).
I've only tried this with PDF files, but having a real-size preview of the first page of the pdf is not really helpful to me, I'd rather see the name of the file as a link.