And while I'm on a rant...

I'm trying to understand the logic of what happens when I make a new 
item.  I often sit down and 'process' open loops, punching in a bunch of 
new action items all at once, one straight after the other.

1.  I click into the entry space at the top - between Sync and  Clean Up.
2.  I type a  new item and press Enter.
3.  This creates an item, puts it on the right hand side of my pane and 
then highlights the text on that item.
4.  I then start to type the text on the next item.
5.  Which then overwrites what I've just entered and is not 
recoverable.  Undo doesn't work at this point - and now I've lost the 
text from the item I've just entered.

I know that I can do Ctrl-N for a new item.  But when I'm in the 
'processing' mode, I just want to type, press enter, type another item, 
press enter and go, go, go...  Ctrl-N requires two hands to make a 
keyboard shortcut that to me, at least, doesn't seem necessary.  I'm at 
the computer, I want to input a bunch of items/tasks in one go - that's 
it.  Isn't the enter button enough here?

Surely I can't be the only person who does this 'big batch-type' 
processing of tasks being put into Chandler?  I know that some items 
need reminders setting, dates for meetings and stuff like that, but it's 
not 'flowing' to do it that way.  From a batch-process point of view, I 
just want to type in all the new items/actions whilst I have them in my 
head, then go back in a couple of minutes and play around with the 
mouse, changing dates, adding reminders, stuff like that.  It's more 
efficient that way to me.  I won't forget when I need to do something, 
but I might forget the action itself if I don't get it into Chandler 
quickly enough.

When I create a new note, I would prefer it if you could just press 
enter and then be ready to type the next one.  This would mean that the 
default would need to be returning to a flashing cursor at the top of 
the centre column and not to highlight what I've already typed.  I 
really don't understand why the default would be to highlight what I've 
just typed - it doesn't make sense to me that the very next action after 
I've typed something would be that I need to do something more with 
exactly the same text...

I would understand it if the default would be to go directly to have the 
cursor in the text box section of the note/item that I've just created.  
That, at least would make intuitive sense to me because I could add more 
info if I needed to.  I'd still prefer it if the default was to be able 
to instantly start typing to create another note.  If I could make a 
suggestion, I'd say that the default should be that you return to the 
top to put in a new item, but that a quick tab would drop you down to 
the note you just created, directly into the text box so that you could 
add more info.

Does this make sense?

Really, I'm just trying to make it seem intuitive and fast.  I want to 
use Chandler as a tool and repository for all the information about 
stuff I have to do.  I want to get tasks/items into Chandler as quickly 
and efficiently as possible so that I can then actually go and do the 
work.  At the moment, I seem to be a bit hamstrung by the way that the 
GUI defaults to certain items.  Means that not only do I take longer to 
input my items/tasks but I also run the risk of deleting/overwriting 
tasks that I've already spent time inputting...

And if a productivity software helps you waste time then it ain't doing 
its job!

Start flame-war here.

Thanks for listening to my rant.

Mark.


-- 
 
 
Mark Hayes.
 
_________________________________
e-mail:  [email protected]



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