You have presented an interesting list. I have read through it and I am not sure how to respond as many of the items vary in importance within my personal workflows. This is not to say I consider your reasons to stay with OmniFocus to have no value. I just understand each user places value on the features which best compliment their workflow and this is difficult to quantify universally as such a tool (OmniFocus) can be used in countless scenarios with multiple methodologies.
To give a little background; the point I had originally asked about in another thread was "are there any contingency plans you have for when the ‘OF1 is no longer supported’ comment comes into fruition? " Intending to gather alternative solutions to OmniFocus; software or otherwise. The, now, beginning of this thread is a follow up question I had in response to a comment from that original question regarding major factors in OF2 being increasingly frustrating. I was curious if the commenter would continue using a software which they stated made them frustrated.
In my experience, I am presently finding the workflows I have become accustomed to while using OF1 not transferring to OF2 as precisely as I would have expected. I personally see this being associated to the design changes and their resulting modification to the application’s functionality. It is disheartening the software “change” was to a degree which makes me feel it has left out the flexibility I enjoy in OF1. I have no problem using scripting to craft solutions for my needs and I rely heavily on custom perspectives in OF1. I have crafted new scripts for Things in my testing and am reworking how I could use flat list opposed to nested. I also am considering if I stay with OF2 to update an Alfred workflow to replace the new built-in quick open feature of OF2; and I suppose I will also consider updating the Rob Trew scripts I find useful.
Right now I have a short list for consideration in no particular order after the first item:
- OmniFocus 2
- Things 2 (I know Things 3 is in alpha)
- Evernote
- Checkmark 2
- OmniPlan
- Notebook, Reminders & Calendar
- Byword & Editorial
- Moleskine Notebook & Pen
- Personal Assistant, Mind Reader, or Psychic
- Still gathering alternatives…
I have yet to find a way to express clearly what the missing piece is in my personal workflow on OF2 compared to OF1. Until then I plan to consider my options while further testing each iteration of OF2 so I may make a more complete decision on how I will proceed in the future once OF1 is no longer supported. To this end, I still am curious about alternative solutions to OmniFocus rather than a list of what OmniFocus does, but I do appreciate the work you did in compiling your reasons to stay with OmniFocus.
Let me add a few comments to some items from your list here:
- Multiple contexts / tags per task — Multiple tags are not currently supported in any version of OmniFocus that I am aware of. I do not use tags and I maintain single contexts for my tasks, but I would argue appending @tag_name to the note field is not an ideal solution; rather it is a walk around. It should be noted: because of a change in the title for a popular thread in the old forums where users were asking for tags (multiple contexts) to be added to OmniFocus brought hope for such a change, but I cannot suggest anything more than an assumption here. This is still not a feature for OF2 as I understand.
- Email to task — appending to a current task could be accomplished using custom scripting, but is not a feature of OmniFocus. OminFocus Mail Drop will not do this, but I would look at the AppleScript OF1 uses as a rule to import items as a starting point for creating such a custom script. The updates to the OmniFocus AppleScript library should also be considered here before porting the script from OF1 to OF2.
- Single task decomposition (into many tasks) — I am not sure what exactly you mean here, but a copied list of items (say from the notes field) can be pasted into OmniFocus. They appear as separate tasks and this has been possible since OF1. You might need to clarify what defines “decomposition” for you in this case.
- Checkboxes in a task — This sounds like a task which could be structured into a set of subtasks and is possible in OF1/OF2. You could also copy and paste a list from the note field in a task and create a group of subtasks similar to what I stated in the item above.
