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Wish: reconcile OmniFocus & OmniOutliner Thread Tools Search this Thread Display Modes
Before the arrival of OmniFocus, I maintained my task lists in OmniOutliner Pro, which was my main use of the latter application. It was a great relief to move task management to OmniFocus. A side-effect was not using OmniOutliner on a regular basis.

I recently created a new OmniOutliner document that I'm updating several times a day, every day. Now that I'm constantly switching back-n-forth between OF and OO, I find I'm making mistakes, mostly in OO, and mostly due to my fingers automatically using OF keyboard shortcuts when I'm in OO. For example,
  • OF: Return in middle of task name = create a new blank task below the current task
  • OO: Return in the middle of a text field = truncate the current line & put the rest of the line (including columns) on a new line
  • OF: Return at the end of a date field = commit the date
  • OO: Return at the end of a date field = commit the date and open a new line
  • OF: Delete at the beginning of a new blank task = delete the task
  • OO: Delete at the beginning of a new blank line = select the last field of the previous line, leaving the blank line
That's just the beginning. My hope is that an Omni Group developer will take on the task of identifying and reconciling the differences between OmniFocus and OmniOutliner.

The dilemma with any reconciliation is that the behavior of one or both applications will change, resulting in push-back from current users. This might be minimized with Keyboard preferences in each application; OmniOutliner already has a start on this.

When the keyboard differences are resolved, then there's the behavior of dragging URLs and Email messages into existing and new entries.

[submitted as formal feedback]
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ward View Post
  • OF: Return in middle of task name = create a new blank task below the current task
  • OO: Return in the middle of a text field = truncate the current line & put the rest of the line (including columns) on a new line
This is a keyboard pref in OO and not the default behavior. Go to the keyboard prefs and uncheck 'When creating new row, split current row at cursor'.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Ward View Post
  • OF: Delete at the beginning of a new blank task = delete the task
  • OO: Delete at the beginning of a new blank line = select the last field of the previous line, leaving the blank line
I don't see this OO behavior, maybe there's a keyboard pref that's causing this but I don't know which one it would be. The behavior should be the same between OF and OO.
 
Re: Return in the middle of an OF task/OO text field
Quote:
Originally Posted by DerekM
This is a keyboard pref in OO and not the default behavior. Go to the keyboard prefs and uncheck 'When creating new row, split current row at cursor'.
I had overlooked OO's "split current row at cursor" preference. Disabling this preference makes OF and OO behave the same - one down.

Re: Delete at the beginning of a blank task/line
Quote:
Originally Posted by DerekM
I don't see this OO behavior, maybe there's a keyboard pref that's causing this but I don't know which one it would be. The behavior should be the same between OF and OO.
I changed a couple of OO Keyboard prefs and was unable to get Delete to remove a blank line. Perhaps where's some combination of the five Keyboard prefs that does this.
 
Ward, in OmniOutliner if you have multiple columns and there is data in any of the columns, then hitting delete at the beginning of the first column will move to the previous row without deleting the initial row. Is it possible that this is what you're seeing?

If, on the other hand, all columns are empty, then the delete key will delete the current row. I just tested again in the 3.7.1 beta and confirmed that it's working as expected, so I'm not sure why you would be getting a different behavior. Could you try it in a different user account to see if it's somehow related to your specific account? (If it is, it might conceivably be related to preferences, so you might try moving them aside.)
 
After reading Andrew's post, I went back to my OO 3.7.1b document and did more testing of delete at the beginning of blank line.

My outline has three columns: two text columns and a date column. The primary text column currently has three levels.

If the cursor is at the end of column 1 (with nothing in columns 2 & 3), pressing Return creates a new blank line. Then pressing Delete removes the blank line. That's consistent with OmniFocus.

If the cursor is following a date value in column 3, pressing Return creates a new blank line. But then pressing Delete simply selects the date field in the previous line. The blank line remains.

Hmmm. This inconsistency is puzzling.

After a little more experimenting, I discovered I'd left the "When creating new row, split current row at cursor" preference enabled. Disabling this option makes deleting blank lines behave like OmniFocus. I'll leave this option off from now on.

With the split option disabled, some inconsistencies between OmniFocus and OmniOutline remain:
  • OF: Return at the end of a date field = commit the date; a second Return opens a new line
  • OO: Return at the end of a date field = commit the date and open a new line
  • OF: Delete at the beginning of a new blank task = delete the task
  • OO: Delete at the beginning of a new blank line = delete the blank line and select the last field of the previous line
For me, these subtle differences are tripping me up in both applications.

Last edited by Ward; 2008-10-08 at 08:41 PM.. Reason: fix typo
 
 


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