Using Computed-Score as a sort criteria in Outline view on iOS

[Mark]

Sorry for the barrage of newbie questions, but I’m in the process of migrating multiple projects from Omnifocus and 2Do to MLO as a test (I did pay for the Pro feature set and the subscription) and, even though I’m reading the manual, so much of what it describes is different or missing from the iOS versions that I’m having some trouble piecing some of it together.

I understand the intended difference between Outline and To-Do views (and I love the concept of the separation), but it seems that, while I can choose to sort by Computed-Score, it does nothing. Is this by design (and if so, why?), or is this a bug?

[Dwight]

Hi, Mark. I am a little confused about what you would like to see if MLO sorted an outline view.

Suppose you had a large complex outline and somewhere in the middle of it was a very complex branch with many levels and sublevels of hierarchy. Somewhere at the bottom of all of that is a task which just happens to have a higher computed-score than any other task in the outline. You would want MLO to display that task at the top of the view, before any other task, right?

So what would happen to that task's parents. Would they still be shown before the child task? If not, then it's not really an outline any more, it's more of a to-do view, right? On the other hand, if the parents are shown first, then it's not really sorted by computed-score.

My understanding of outline sorting is this: the top-level (leftmost indent) items get sorted, their children do not. I cannot explain how this is useful, which is partly because I cannot imagine why one would want top sort an outline. If you can, please describe how you think it should work.
-Dwight

[Mark]

Hi Dwight,

Thanks very much for your reply! Your question raises interesting implications... I wasn’t thinking through to all of the potential ramifications of the results of sorting by computed score in Outline Views but, in answer to your question, yes, I would want the parents to move in accordance with the highest computed score of the children, because their importance automatically increases the importance of the parent, in my world, at least. If your kid has an emergency of some sort and mine doesn’t, you need the lion’s share of whatever resources are required - that kind of thing.

On the broader level that I was concerned about when I posted the question, it seems that MLO lets me choose to sort by a variable that doesn’t actually do anything, and that always bothers my analytical brain to excess... :)

Mark

[Dwight]

On 10/25/2017 7:12 AM, Mark wrote:
> MLO lets me choose to sort by a variable that doesn’t actually do anything

Mark, that's not at all true. I don't personally like computed-score but
for sure it really does do something. The problem is not that
computed-score does nothing, the problem is that you are trying to sort
a hierarchy, and it's not clear what it even would mean to do that. You
are indicating that you want the branches sorted in the order of the
highest priority task per branch. That's an interesting idea, one that I
have no heard before, and worthy of some consideration. But the way that
you describe it seems hard to implement, because you are sorting the
items at one level (the root) but the order is determined by items that
are arbitrarily far down the tree.

Lets look at it a different way. I think that what you want could be
described this way: I want to see the tasks in my profile, sorted in
order of decreasing priority, with the parents of each task shown.

MLO can do this. Just set up a to-do list of tasks in priority order,
then look at the filter definitions in the left sidebar, in the general
section, and change "show hierarchy" from No to Yes. The word "config"
will appear after the word "yes" (make sure the sidebar is wide enough
to show it). Click on config and then turn on inclusion of parents and
turn off inclusion of children. Let me know please how you like the result.

[Mark]

Hello Dwight,

Thanks again for devoting your time and ideas to my little problem... Perhaps the issue is that MLOi doesn’t work the same as MLO<something else>. What you described as a potential solution should work perfectly for me, but doesn’t. I just retested this - my new “Dwight” view (named in your honor, of course) is very unlike you, in that it is completely unresponsive. In MLOi terms, the settings are View Name - Dwight, Action Filter - Available, Advanced Filter - None, Group by - None, Sort by - Computed-score (Descending), Show Hierarchy - Yes, Include Parent items - On, Parent Filter - None, Include Child items - No. The order of the items displayed seems to be, to the best of my ability to discern any difference, completely unaffected by changing the Sort by order parameter between Descending and Ascending, or even omitting Computed-Score from the sort at all (i.e. Sort By - None). I also tried turning the “Continue searching in branch option” On and Off, to no effect.

If your testing is on a different platform and produces different results, then that must be the issue, and I’ve found a bug, it would seem. (As you accurately pointed out, whether it does what I want it to do or not is a completely different matter...)

Thanks again for your assistance in narrowing this down - my first concern, as I’ve attempted to articulate, is that the sort mechanism in MLOi seems to do nothing when “Include Parent Items” is On. In my world (having been involved in software development since 1980), either it needs to do something or it needs to not be there... Your assistance may have brought to light a situation in which it works on one platform and not on another, which should make it much easier to track down, at least to the degree that I know whether my idea of how it should work is the same as the developers. On that topic, I see it as rather simple: within whatever other Group and Filter criteria are selected, sort everything by Computed Score and display them in that order, also displaying whatever Parent/Project/Folder hierarchy applies with them. I realize that this could create a rather convoluted-looking list, but it’s only in the display of it, and doesn’t really complicate the process in any way. That having been said, I do know that sort routines are rather fiddly, so I probably wouldn’t ever have brought this up if I couldn’t select the options I want, but since (it appears) I can select what (I think) I want, but just changing the order from Ascending to Descending, the simplest of all sorting changes, has absolutely no effect, my feeble brain starts to become agitated...

Thanks again (very much!),

Mark

[Dwight Arthur]

Hey, Mark, it is going to take me a whole to dig into this. MLO helps me raton the time that I  spend on my addictive hobby of tweaking MLO. I WILL get back to this but it will not be soon.

I just wanted to clarify that I  did not yet this on any platform, I was just naming something that should work based on my prior experience. I have some theories of what is happening for you but like I said, it will be a whole before I test them.
-d

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "MyLifeOrganized" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to mylifeorganiz...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to mylifeo...@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/mylifeorganized.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/mylifeorganized/c40a9e0a-42e0-4178-a2af-cd4557312a21%40googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

[Mark]

Thanks again for your assistance, Dwight. I understand that you’re probably busy. Don’t let my issues concern you over-much. This is causing me to lose sleep and my personal relationships are pretty much all destroyed because of how agitated I’ve become, not too mention that I’ve lost all my hair but, as I said, don’t let my issues concern you. Oh, wait, never mind, I just realized that all that was true BEFORE I ran into this issue...

(Since sarcasm doesn’t come through very well in print, I’ll just say for the record, once again, that I appreciate the time you’ve taken to discuss this issue with me VERY much, and I look forward to your response when it’s convenient for you...)

Mark