[Chrome]

First and foremost: Hi! Last week I decided to give OF a try because of all the praise it gets and of course because of the good impression the company (and of course its users) left behind after reading the website and the support forums.

So I bought the iPhone version and downloaded the Desktop Demo, because I simply wanted more than Appigos todo.

Last Friday I created all my projects at my Desktop and transfered them via WIFI sync over to the iPhone. Everything is OK. With the exception of a double Miscellaneous Folder on the iPhone, which I think is created on the iPhone because it does not recognize the Miscellaneous folder I created on the desktop.

But I have a real problem with the perspectives. I created one on the desktop (with all items in, in order of the due date and of course the ones without a due date, too) and synced it over to the iPhone, because I think the Perspectives are the Bred and Butter of this Tool! But now I observed that there seems to be a problem with all of my perspectives on the iPhone, because sometimes they seem to be inverted.

The sorting order of two built-in Perspectives (after Due Date and Completed) and the one I created sometimes get mixed up.

In the normal case both buil-in ones are sorted in this way the the actual date is on top. So with the one after Due date you go in to the future by scrolling down and with the Completed one you go into the past. My custom Perspective uses the same sets as the built-in (after Due Date) but expands to all task in the database. If I start the App the items in this Perspective are sorted in the way that the task which is the farthest in the future is on top and the today tasks are at the bottom (which is contrary to the view I created at the desktop, and of course inverted). But when I quit the app out of multitasking and restart it, this perspective gets sorted the right way (today on top), as is the built-in one after Due Date, but the Completed Perspective inverts to today at the bottom :confused:

What am I doing wrong? Ok I know Perspectives is beta on the iPhone.....

I hope I made my problem clear, because english is not my native language...Thanks for your help.

[Chrome]

OK, so I did a little testing @home with my PowerBook and my iPhone. The sorting confusion is not correlated to the custom perspectives. It happens even with the built-in ones after deleting the custom built..... Completed is sorted the other way than Due soon. On the desktop both are sorted the same way....

Strange. Is this a known problem? Or am I doing something wrong?

[Ken Case]

On the iPhone, the top of a long list is much easier to access than the bottom, so we try to place the items you're most likely to be interested in at the top of the list rather than the bottom. For a list of completed items, we assume you're more interested in looking at the items you recently completed than items you completed a year or two ago.

On the Mac, it's fairly easy to get to the bottom of a long list (just grab the scrollbar, or press the End key), so we leave them all in ascending order.

[Chrome]

Hi!

Thank you for your very fast response, makes me sure that I spent the money in the right way :)

I can understand your point and find it quite logical. But the sorting order is strange nevertheless:

Due Soon: Starts today with today on top and goes in the future (by scrolling down)

Completed: Starts with the first completed item in the list (in my case last Friday) and by scrolling down you reach today. According to you it should be the other way round, shouldn´t it?

And what ist even stranger is that you can change to sorting order by closing the app out of multitasking.

[whpalmer4]

Originally Posted by Ken Case

On the Mac, it's fairly easy to get to the bottom of a long list (just grab the scrollbar, or press the End key), so we leave them all in ascending order.

That it is easy to get to the other end of the list isn't much of a reason for having the list be in a less useful order!

Fortunately, the lists on the Mac do seem to be ordered properly. The following are sorted/grouped from earliest date to latest:

Due, start

And these are sorted/grouped from latest date to earliest:

Completed, added, changed

I also think the argument about putting the most likely to be interesting items at the top of the list on the iOS devices makes more ammunition for my viewpoint that the No Start Date group belongs at the far end of the list when viewing something grouped/sorted by start date. Someone looking at a tickler list is interested in the items which have a start date, not the ones which do not.

All this aside, I see that the iPhone code still has the bug where it retains the directionality of the first perspective viewed. See OG #539027. That is likely to be the source of the original poster's confusion. Depending on the order in which he views the perspectives, he will get different results.

[Chrome]

Originally Posted by whpalmer4

All this aside, I see that the iPhone code still has the bug where it retains the directionality of the first perspective viewed. See OG #539027. That is likely to be the source of the original poster's confusion. Depending on the order in which he views the perspectives, he will get different results.

Oh yes you are right! Thank you, I´m not mad :D
Depending upon which Perspective I open first, some of the others change the sorting order:

If I open Due Soon first, after startup, its sorted in a future oriented way: For Due Soon this means it starts today and then goes into the future. Quite right I think, for this type of Perspective.
But if I choose Completed afterwards this is sorted in a future oriented way, too: This means it starts at the first entry in the database and goes into the future from there, to the last entry from today. The direction ist the same, going from the past into the future.

If I open the Completed Perspective first upon startup this one is sorted backwards, it starts today and goes from there into the past. I think this is the right way for it! Opened after this, the Due Soon Perspective changes in the same direction, meaning it starts at the farthest day in the future of the list and from there goes backward in time! Same direction of time.

So by opening the first date sensitive Perspective you retain the sorting order (timeline) for the next ones you open. I don´t think that this is the way it should be.

[whpalmer4]

Originally Posted by Chrome

So by opening the first date sensitive Perspective you retain the sorting order (timeline) for the next ones you open. I don´t think that this is the way it should be.

Yes, you are correct — I submitted a bug about this against both the iPad and iPhone applications this summer, but so far only the iPad has gotten the fix. Use Send Feedback from the Settings page to bump up the priority of getting this fixed. You don't have to describe the bug again, just put in a link to this thread.

[Chrome]

Originally Posted by whpalmer4

...You don't have to describe the bug again, just put in a link to this thread.

Already done :) But I used the support email. Thank you for your great help! Let´s hope that they will fix it.