Change from 'AND' to 'OR' logic when Ctrl-selecting multiple contexts.
Hello,
There has been suggestions of allowing multiple contexts before. They have often been discussions of generally allowing multiple contexts and the discussions often grow to include bigger and bigger change requests and more and more complicated GUI changes required to make them work. I want to avoid that kind of discussion in this topic, and keep it to a very specific change request.
What I suggest to change.
Today, when you select multiple context (by holding down Ctrl), Nirvana will show only those tasks that have all the selected contexts. The change I propose is for Nirvana to show all tasks that have at least one of the selected contexts.
If you worry about breaking someone's existing usage of Nirvana, allow the user to switch to the new 'OR' logic in the preferences.
An example
Say I have to following tasks and contexts:
- Mend my jeans. (home)
- Upgrade my Wordpress theme. (online)
- Buy shaving cream (errand)
If I am at home (where I also have a computer connected to the internet) then, if I want to see everything that I can do right there and then, I should be able to select both the 'home' and 'online' contexts and see that I can, right now, either mend my jeans or upgrade wordpress.
If I get a powercut, then (using my phone, I guess) I can deselect the 'online' context and see that now all I can do is mend my jeans.
Why is this OR logic better than the current AND logic?
In GTD, you attach to tasks the context in which you can do that task, such as 'work', 'home', 'grocery store' etc. There is nothing in GTD that says that the contexts have to be mutually exclusive. On the contrary, we often find ourselves in several contexts at the same time, for example, you might be at home, where you have a phone while also being online. Three contexts, but no way of seeing the tasks for those three contexs in one list. Currently, you have to flip between the three context to see each set in isolation.
The current AND logic is only every usefull if you apply multiple contexts to the same tasks, but I have never found that I do that - not once! - and I don't even know what that would mean, in GTD terms. Since it seems like such an abstract thing to do, I don't think it would hurt to replace the AND logic for the much more useful OR logic.
Why this change should be prioritized
Apart from the OR logic being very useful (As I hope I've shown above.) it should also be a simple change to do. Nothing has to change on the GUI. No new buttons or selections. No visual elements change. There is already the ability to Ctrl-select multiple contexts. The only thing that need to change is what tasks are shown. It is a behind the scene change, not a GUI change. Most people would probably not even notice as I doubt many people today use the Ctrl-selection of multiple contexts.
More complex changes regarding complex searches can come later. This switch from AND to OR is a low-hanging, and juicy, fruit.
Again, I want to keep the discussion to the pros and cons of this particular and specific change request. Avoid the scope creep of asking for more and more stuff. Those discussions are useful, but they have already been had in other posts, and the problem with them is that eventually, you lose track of what change request you are discussing.
2 Posted by ma.prochazka on 26 Oct, 2011 08:27 AM
+1
3 Posted by candeshouse on 26 Oct, 2011 01:47 PM
+1
4 Posted by Chris Webb on 26 Oct, 2011 02:19 PM
+1
5 Posted by torstenkoepke on 26 Oct, 2011 08:23 PM
+1
6 Posted by Proximo on 27 Oct, 2011 02:54 AM
+1
Support Staff 7 Posted by David McLaughlin on 29 Oct, 2011 11:52 PM
sigh -- me too, +1
8 Posted by Neil on 31 Oct, 2011 01:00 PM
+1
9 Posted by Kathie on 31 Oct, 2011 03:28 PM
Ahhhh. Although I see the logic behind this change request, if this is implemented it will really mess up a key way we use Nirvana. Right now I have context tags assigned to all my employees as well as physical locations and task labels. We use the control filter to quickly see what any two people need to do or discuss together (two names) or what any one person needs to do in a certain context. With seven employees, it would quickly become impossible to narrow the scope enough using the tags. If everything tagged for Briea and everything tagged for Marie came up when they were searching for their mutual tasks, it would make the function completely moot for us. Until Nirvana comes out of Beta and has collaboration features, this is a smooth work around for us. I would hate to see it eliminated.
Perhaps this could be implimented as an optional preference?
Support Staff 10 Posted by David McLaughlin on 31 Oct, 2011 04:08 PM
@Kathie - yes, if implemented, both would be available (perhaps via toggle or radio button, etc.) and/or preferences, I suspect.
While I have to agree that 95% of the time I would use the OR option, the other 5% AND is also needed and I wouldn't want to lose that either.
David
11 Posted by Kathie on 01 Nov, 2011 06:41 AM
Thanks, David
12 Posted by adam.d.jacobs on 01 Nov, 2011 12:04 PM
Just joined the forum to reply to this thread. Yes OR functionality with multiple selections would be perfect, I often take a break from work and want to see tasks I can do at home or in the neighborhood. Plenty of other uses for it as well I can imagine.
Nice product you have here, I'm really enjoying it so far.
13 Posted by drdoombot on 13 Nov, 2011 11:10 PM
This is a feature they removed from Todoist early on (they had it set to OR and changed it to AND). I asked them to put it back but they didn't. :(
14 Posted by Folke on 14 Nov, 2011 08:22 AM
Obviously there is use both for OR logic and AND logic, so why not bite the bullet and implement both - say Ctrl+click for AND (to keep the continuity) and Shift+click for OR.
Sometimes there is even a need for nested logic, either ANDed "groups" of ORed conditions or vice versa, i.e ORed "groups" of ANDed conditions, but to have this implemented this with a "click" approach is probably a bit too difficult to use. It would probably involve an extra key, e.g. Alt+Shift+click or Alt+Ctrl+click, to start a new "group" of conditions. If or when smart lists are implemented, this can all be done more easily. But even if it is left out as an explicit aim for the present stage to use both AND and OR in the same filtering, it still must be well defined what is going to happen if a user starts to both shift-click and control-click different context tags. In the first version such attempts probably should just render the whole filtering void.