Suggestion: Clear comments for recurring tasks (via Facebook page)

[Tony G]

Quote from user via the Facebook page (private message) :

"I would like comments on a daily task to be kept when that task is closed without being reported on the next instance of that task."

Looking at this now, I'm not 100% sure of the current/expected/requested behaviour. I gather comments on a recurring task are being carried forward? Since each effort is unique I can understand how someone would not want comments to aggregate.

[.dan.g.]

Thx Tony.

I'll make this change for 7.1 and if that causes a great furore I'll add some preferences to control it.

[.dan.g.]

Actually, I might just implement this for recreated recurring tasks rather than reused recurring tasks because I can easily imagine someone wanting to maintain a log of comments which persists each time the task is reused.

On Sunday, 26 June 2016 02:58:05 UTC+10, Tony G wrote:

[.dan.g.]

Fixed in 7.1.A4?

On Sunday, 26 June 2016 02:58:05 UTC+10, Tony G wrote:

[Tony G]

Passing back to user for comment. That was VERY quick, thanks. :)

On Sunday, June 26, 2016 at 4:42:20 AM UTC-5, .dan.g. wrote:

Fixed in 7.1.A4?

[G-Eric]

Basically, I understand the point of Tony, and share the view Dan has on a more 'subtile' usage.
As Dan suspected, I use indeed the comment zone to log information in a recurring task.

• Most of the time, I set it up recurrence as a "reused" task to limit the impact on the records / database
  (i.e. current new behaviour in v7.1.A4 is ok 'as is')
  
• But some of the tasks have recurrence as a "recreated" task for tracing & reporting reasons
  (i.e. current new behaviour in v7.1.A4 is not ok 'as is').
  

Therefore, IMO it makes sense..

1. to never clean comment zone for reused recurring tasks
2. to clean the comment zone by default for recreated recurring tasks,
   with a (new) option (i.e. preference) dedicated to "recreated" tasks to keep comment zone.
   

This said...
The behaviour of point 2 might drive some users in problem as it breaks current way of working if they don't act to change setup (legacy).
Therefore, it could be safer to reverse the new option setup, i.e. by default comment zone of recreated task is ket, and cleaned if new preference is activated.
But this safer approach is less natural way of working, i.e. not as suggested by Tony.

So, an 'in between' solution to conciliate both Tony's suggestion (natural way of working) and legacy (don't break existing usage) might be:

1. make a new preference for "recreated" recurrent tasks
2. /  for new database : set it up as "inactive" by default (i.e. comment zone is cleaned)
   \  for existing database : set it up as "active" to stay in line with current usage and avoid unexpected data loss (legacy consistency)
   

Easy to think about it... but such implementation might be (more) complicated.

[.dan.g.]

Thx for your comments Eric.

I still find it difficult to imagine needing to keep the historical comments in a recreated task when the previous task still exists and it available for viewing.

Unless, you can come up with a plausible use-case...

[G-Eric]

1)
To answer you question, my usage is as follows:

• a recurring 'recreated' task is used to contain a description of all actions taken so far (log)
  
• when due, action is performed and log updated in 'comments'
• then task is marked as completed
  
  This way, 2 different usages in one shot:
  - I can find all completed tasks to report the sequence of actions performed (date, frequency, count, ...)
  - I can find the log of action taken in the task coming soon (next due date)
  

2)
This said, there is no reason to have TDL modified for a single-user way of working.
In the future (i.e. when TDL new version will be released), I will change my process to match with the new TDL behaviour.

Thanks & Regards - Have a nice day - Eric