Noobie, liking RTM, but when do they fix Boolean searching?
(closed account) says:
Been trying out RTM for 3 days now, and it works well overall, has some very nice features. I'm replacing a rather kludgy todo system in Evernote.
Really impressed:
Had problems getting Quick Add to work, figured out it was pop-up issue, fixed it. But then the next lesson in the RTM tutorial was how to fix the Pop-up problem! Tutorial seems complete and accurate.
Gripes:
Don't like that when I create a new task, when I enter it it jumps to the bottom of the list and I have to go chase after it to set due dates and tags, etc.
Thought the idea of multi-select was to be able to tag/set due date, etc on more that one task at a time. Doesn't work with tags. Found out I have to press "m" key in some instances. Not consistent, will definitely mark more than one task complete w/o "m" key! So does anyone have a list of what things you can do to multiple tasks w/o pressing "m", like "complete", and what things you have to press "m" to do multiply? More importantly, does anyone know if it's on the developer's radar to fix this?
Would like to be able to purge completed tasks at some point. I don't seen any way to do this. Are all completed tasks kept "forever"? Gonna be a lot of disk space someday.
Questions:
What does the gray arrow on the left, next to the Priority bar, on one task indicate?
Are the Boolean search capabilities going to be implemented soon? There's a whole help page on them, but they don't work yet. Would be very nice to use smart search to combine custom lists, make virtually any list I need! So when does this happen? I hope it's coming soon.
So far, I like RTM very much. Better than the kludge I've been doing. Will be prowling these forums for more information. (I did a search in them for "Boolean" before I posted, but not a single mention of this feature anywhere in the forums)
Thanks.
Really impressed:
Had problems getting Quick Add to work, figured out it was pop-up issue, fixed it. But then the next lesson in the RTM tutorial was how to fix the Pop-up problem! Tutorial seems complete and accurate.
Gripes:
Don't like that when I create a new task, when I enter it it jumps to the bottom of the list and I have to go chase after it to set due dates and tags, etc.
Thought the idea of multi-select was to be able to tag/set due date, etc on more that one task at a time. Doesn't work with tags. Found out I have to press "m" key in some instances. Not consistent, will definitely mark more than one task complete w/o "m" key! So does anyone have a list of what things you can do to multiple tasks w/o pressing "m", like "complete", and what things you have to press "m" to do multiply? More importantly, does anyone know if it's on the developer's radar to fix this?
Would like to be able to purge completed tasks at some point. I don't seen any way to do this. Are all completed tasks kept "forever"? Gonna be a lot of disk space someday.
Questions:
What does the gray arrow on the left, next to the Priority bar, on one task indicate?
Are the Boolean search capabilities going to be implemented soon? There's a whole help page on them, but they don't work yet. Would be very nice to use smart search to combine custom lists, make virtually any list I need! So when does this happen? I hope it's coming soon.
So far, I like RTM very much. Better than the kludge I've been doing. Will be prowling these forums for more information. (I did a search in them for "Boolean" before I posted, but not a single mention of this feature anywhere in the forums)
Thanks.
Welcome to RTM. It's a very powerful system, and it only gets better when you learn and share here in the forum, so you're off to a good start.
1) I am on record, many times, about the problems with the multiedit UI. I think it causes confusion that virtually ensures problems like what you describe. A sample thread for this issue can be found here: http://www.rememberthemilk.com/forums/ideas/7243/ although that is far from the only one.
2) You can create a list to which you migrate completed tasks and then archive it to get them out of the way, but I can assure you there are users here with 3+ years worth of thousands of completed tasks, and RTM handles them fine. As for disk space, given the fact that youtube and Flickr store megs and gigs for free, I suspect RTM can handle the disk space associated with textual lists.
3) The arrow, or chevron, on the left, is an indicator for use with the keyboard shortcuts. http://1.www.rememberthemilk.com/forums/help/3276/
4) I encourage you to post the Boolean syntax that is not working for you, so that rajjan or someone else here can help you with it. It does work and is indeed very powerful.
Keep your questions coming.
1) I am on record, many times, about the problems with the multiedit UI. I think it causes confusion that virtually ensures problems like what you describe. A sample thread for this issue can be found here: http://www.rememberthemilk.com/forums/ideas/7243/ although that is far from the only one.
2) You can create a list to which you migrate completed tasks and then archive it to get them out of the way, but I can assure you there are users here with 3+ years worth of thousands of completed tasks, and RTM handles them fine. As for disk space, given the fact that youtube and Flickr store megs and gigs for free, I suspect RTM can handle the disk space associated with textual lists.
3) The arrow, or chevron, on the left, is an indicator for use with the keyboard shortcuts. http://1.www.rememberthemilk.com/forums/help/3276/
4) I encourage you to post the Boolean syntax that is not working for you, so that rajjan or someone else here can help you with it. It does work and is indeed very powerful.
Keep your questions coming.
(closed account) says:
Thanks for your reply.
1) Good to know it's been pointed out before - needs to be corrected. Since I'm new here, I don't know how responsive the developers are, particularly when it comes to interface ideas they may have thought were very clever but their users find annoying, or worse. I hope they're not following the M$ model which is that M$ programmers know more than anybody else and never make mistakes (at least not designed in mistakes).
2. "You can create a list to which you migrate completed tasks and then archive it to get them out of the way"
How?
"As for disk space, given the fact that youtube and Flickr store megs and gigs for free"
I'm old school (not to mention, old) and I don't trust any online service that gives me "free" infinite space unless I've seen a sucessful business model that supports that (which I haven't seen yet). The Kodak fiasco of a few years ago is a harbinger of things to come with other "free" webspace sevices.
If something like RTM crashes, it'll take me a week or two to get my todo list back in shape. If Kodak (or Flickr) decides to cut the quality of all my stored photos without telling me, my images may be lost forever. So I'll trust RTM because the downside is small. But I doubt that any organization offering free online storage, even for text, will be around using the same business model 10 yrs from now.
3) Got it.
4) Played with boolean filtering a bit more, got some to work. This one still doesn't:
list:monica_w and list:<15m
list monica_w is a list filtered for the tag "monica_w" (my boss) and list <15m is a list filtered for duration <16 min (because I really wanted = or < 16). Both lists work fine, and there is one task that is both tagged "monica_w" with a duration of 15 min. So why doesn't that task show? I get a blank on this filter.
Same with this one:
list:monica_w and list:today
Since monica_w is a tag and a list, I also tried:
tags:monica_w and list:today
and
s:monica_w and list:today
All of which yielded nulls.
Maybe the problem is with "monia_w"? So I tested it with "glenn_l" and still get a null.
Maybe it's the underline in some of my tags (shouldn't be, it's a legit ASCII character and not a DOS owned character)?
tags:vba and list:today
null.
So, I'm not having much luck with boolean searches. See why I thought the feature is broken? Any suggestions?
1) Good to know it's been pointed out before - needs to be corrected. Since I'm new here, I don't know how responsive the developers are, particularly when it comes to interface ideas they may have thought were very clever but their users find annoying, or worse. I hope they're not following the M$ model which is that M$ programmers know more than anybody else and never make mistakes (at least not designed in mistakes).
2. "You can create a list to which you migrate completed tasks and then archive it to get them out of the way"
How?
"As for disk space, given the fact that youtube and Flickr store megs and gigs for free"
I'm old school (not to mention, old) and I don't trust any online service that gives me "free" infinite space unless I've seen a sucessful business model that supports that (which I haven't seen yet). The Kodak fiasco of a few years ago is a harbinger of things to come with other "free" webspace sevices.
If something like RTM crashes, it'll take me a week or two to get my todo list back in shape. If Kodak (or Flickr) decides to cut the quality of all my stored photos without telling me, my images may be lost forever. So I'll trust RTM because the downside is small. But I doubt that any organization offering free online storage, even for text, will be around using the same business model 10 yrs from now.
3) Got it.
4) Played with boolean filtering a bit more, got some to work. This one still doesn't:
list:monica_w and list:<15m
list monica_w is a list filtered for the tag "monica_w" (my boss) and list <15m is a list filtered for duration <16 min (because I really wanted = or < 16). Both lists work fine, and there is one task that is both tagged "monica_w" with a duration of 15 min. So why doesn't that task show? I get a blank on this filter.
Same with this one:
list:monica_w and list:today
Since monica_w is a tag and a list, I also tried:
tags:monica_w and list:today
and
s:monica_w and list:today
All of which yielded nulls.
Maybe the problem is with "monia_w"? So I tested it with "glenn_l" and still get a null.
Maybe it's the underline in some of my tags (shouldn't be, it's a legit ASCII character and not a DOS owned character)?
tags:vba and list:today
null.
So, I'm not having much luck with boolean searches. See why I thought the feature is broken? Any suggestions?
andrewski (Remember The Milk) says:
cdhsman,
Firstly, I've found that most search strings are case-sensitive (though I'm not sure why specifically). This isn't mentioned on the FAQ page (also not sure why), but I've learned it through trial-and-error. So I always capitalize Booleans. (Easy habit to get into since that's what Google requires too.)
So list:monica_w and list: should be list:monica_w AND list:. (And watch out for the camelCase words like tagContains; those trip me up sometimes.)
Also, tags should be tag.
And no, the underscore shouldn't trip up your searches, but if you're worried, you can always surround your search term in quotes to search a string, e.g. name:"Call Mom".
Firstly, I've found that most search strings are case-sensitive (though I'm not sure why specifically). This isn't mentioned on the FAQ page (also not sure why), but I've learned it through trial-and-error. So I always capitalize Booleans. (Easy habit to get into since that's what Google requires too.)
So list:monica_w and list: should be list:monica_w AND list:. (And watch out for the camelCase words like tagContains; those trip me up sometimes.)
Also, tags should be tag.
And no, the underscore shouldn't trip up your searches, but if you're worried, you can always surround your search term in quotes to search a string, e.g. name:"Call Mom".
andrewski (Remember The Milk) says:
Whoops, even though Preview said my <b>s were fine, it didn't like them. :-/ Sorry for all the extra bolding.
(closed account) says:
Thanks for the reply. I had figured some of this out. See my other post about stuff that's still confusing me.
I think the bolding helps,
I think the bolding helps,