First of all, let me say that I consider this purely a fun technical
exercise - I think for the next release, cleaning up the usability of
the current solution is probably the right answer....
I still think that if we are adding new things into the list in the
right place, that my original idea would work. Let's take Ron's
example. The convention I'll use is that when a task is moved, I'll
put it in bold here. The system has to keep track of which have been
moved in order for this to work. It's a simple data field, per view.
So his original list of sort-values was:
1,1,2,2,2,3,3,4,4,5,6,7,7,8,9
Then he moved them around:
1,5,2,2,3,7,4,6,2,3,4,7,1,8,9.
(notice that the non-bold are in numerical order - they were never moved).
Now, you want to insert something into the list. You simply ignore
the moved tasks in your calculations.
So, to insert a 3, you would pass 1 because of sort order, pass 5
because it's ignored, pass 2, 2, and 3 because of sort order, you
pass 7 because it's ignored, and now you see it goes before 4. Now,
there is a choice - do you put it before or after the moved items -
in this case, 7? I say after - it's easier to implement (slightly)
because you don't have to back up, and it makes more sense to me, but
either way works. Or if you want to get complicated, once you find
the place in the list not using your moved tasks (between 3 and 4),
you could place it within the sublist of moved tasks according to
their values - basically a secondary sort.
So, you put it between 7 and 4. Because that is where it would go if
the 7 wasn't there. If you were doing the second refinement, you
would first figure out that it goes between the unmodified 3 and 4,
and then since 3 is leass than 7, you would put it ahead of 7. But
if the 7 was a 1 that you had put there earlier, you put the 3 behind the 1.
When an non-moved item's sort-value is modified, you have to use this
same strategy to place it as if its a new item, or mark it as "moved"
in the list so it will be ignored...otherwise your list gets corrupted.
The big disadvantage of my strategy is that things you have moved
will tend to drift up over time, as other tasks are completed and new
tasks are added. That's true of manual mode now though.
As my husband pointed out, a more elegant way to do this is not to
have manual vs. automatic mode at all. You could keep an alternate
value for each sort criteria on items manually moved. So when you
moved the 5 in the first place, you would give it a manual-sort-value
of 1. (I don't know how you would tell where in the "1s" to put it
though). You wouldn't change it's actual sort value, which is
5. Then, basically you wouldn't have any differentiation between
manual and automatic sort. The UI would have to mark the moved items
(perhaps a "pinned" icon) and alllow you to "unpin" them, to set them
back to normal. It seems pretty tricky to take into account all the
special cases though.
He then suggested you could take this even further for computed
score. When you manually moved an item with a computed score, you
could set it's "manual-sort-computed-score-offset" to be used as an
offset from it's previous value that would put it into that
particular position. (In the above example, when you are moving that
first 5, you give it an offset of 1 (the value of the spot you put it
in the list) minus 5, or -4. Then, if you changed one of the
parameters that went into the computed score, it would change the
base that the offset is applied to, making even your "pinned" (moved)
items, dynamically update when you modify them, but keep their
relative places in line. For most sort orders, this would be
confusing for users, but since computed-score is such a black box for
most of us anyway, it might just work :)
Now see, isn't this discussion much more fun than the things at the
top of your task list? :)
Lisa
----------
Lisa Stroyan, mailto:lstro...@gmail.com
www.empathic-parenting.com
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
"MyLifeOrganized" group.
To post to this group, send email to mylifeorgani...@googlegroups.com.
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to
mylifeorganized+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit this group at
http://groups.google.com/group/mylifeorganized?hl=en.
