Suggestion: Flags should have the ability to have open/closed hours.

[John . Smith]

Hello 

I would like to suggest that Flags should have the ability to have open/closed hours, in the same way that Contexts already do. 

The reason I want this is because I like to have just once Context in my Context field and I don't want to clutter up my Context field with anything other than actual (real world) contexts, otherwise things become hard to see what's going on and manage.

The point is that most my Contexts happen in my Evenings and Weekends as happen during the working day and the flag of Evening or not is a different type of data.

Any takers?

J

[Dwight]

If a task has multiple contexts and the contexts do not have the same
schedule, the task is active any time that at least one of its contexts
is open. If the task had a flag with its own, different schedule how
would it be resolved?

-Dwight

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[John . Smith]

Yes, good question. Thank you, Dwight.

[As ever Dwight can be relied upon to ask the key question!   :) ]

I suggest the Flag is treated much like just another of the multiple contexts. i.e. If any of the contexts or the flag has opening hours set up, then if any of said opening hours are currently of "open" value, then the task should appear. 

J

On Thursday, March 2, 2017 at 11:44:15 PM UTC, Dwight wrote:

If a task has multiple contexts and the contexts do not have the same
schedule, the task is active any time that at least one of its contexts
is open. If the task had a flag with its own, different schedule how
would it be resolved?

-Dwight

On 3/2/2017 6:20 PM, John . Smith wrote:
>
> Hello
>
> I would like to suggest that Flags should have the ability to have
> open/closed hours, in the same way that Contexts already do.
>
> The reason I want this is because I like to have just once Context in my
> Context field and I don't want to clutter up my Context field with
> anything other than actual (real world) contexts, otherwise things
> become hard to see what's going on and manage.
>
> The point is that most my Contexts happen in my Evenings and Weekends as
> happen during the working day and the flag of Evening or not is a
> different type of data.
>
> Any takers?
>
> J
>
> --
> 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

> <mailto:mylifeorganized+unsub...@googlegroups.com>.

[Nick Clark]

Not sure how that solves your problem, as the hide a task until the evening every context and flag assigned to it would have to only be open in the evening.

[John . Smith]

Nick I don't understand your point. The suggestion here is that conceptually the task "always tries to be open".

To get clear this would mean:

a) If neither the Flags nor any of the contexts have opening times set ==> open

b) If just the Flag has an opening time set ==> that opening time works.

c) If just one Context has an opening time set ==> that opening time works.

So far so good, but what about clashes?

d) If two Contexts have conflicting opening times set ==> then whenever either opening time say open now, then then the task is open.

e) If the Flag has an opening times set that conflicts with any of the Contexts ==> then whenever any of the opening times say "open now", then then the task is open.

In this way Contexts and Flags that have no opening hours set have no effect. So in short user needs to be careful with their opening hours.

My core point is that I see no good reason why Flag shouldn't have the ability to have opening hours. And for simplicity I see no reason why a Flag's opening hours should over-ride that of a Context in any way that is different from how Contexts interact with each other. However I don't feel strongly about his and there may of course be very good reasons, in which case let's hear them - ideally with some examples.   :)

J

[Nick Clark]

At present contexts that don't have times set are always "open", hence if a task has any of these contexts then all other contexts or flags with times will have no effect. For your task to only be active in the evening, it should only have one context/flag set with the rest of the time closed. You can currently achieve that with a context, and the flags can be used to categorise your task.

[Dwight]

John, there are currently three types of schedules, those with some hours defined as open and some hours defined as closed, those that are always open, and those that are always closed. Each of these has a meaning and a use. The behaviour you are seeking tracks exactly with "always closed" contexts except for your first point. If a task has multiple contexts with "always closed" schedules and one context (or potentially, flag) with a defined schedule, the schedule will prevail as in your scenarios b and c. If a task has multiple always-closed contexts and also multiple scheduled contexts (or a flag) then the task will be active any time that  at least one of the scheduled contexts is open.The only issue is with the first scenario - if you have a task with multiple contexts, all always-closed, the task will always be closed where you want it to be always open.

So what you are looking for is a fourth type of schedule setting in addition to scheduled, always-closed or always-open which would be always open if every context/tag on this task is this same type, otherwise always closed. This would be valuable because it would allow combining contexts in ways not currently possible. For example, if a task has context "phone" which can be done anytime, but this particular task must be done in the evening, you cannot combine "phone" and "evening" to get the right result - this new type would allow combining, for that reason I would call it "combinable" - I hope there is a better name because I can only imagine how difficult it would be to explain to a newbie when to use combinable schedule versus always open or always closed.