Can somebody assist me, I'm struggling to understand what I'm doing wrong?

TaskPaper
1

I want to be to get to any price from many tags and projects in two taps, is this possible?

#**Nature Of Repair**:

-------

Basic Solder
##Silver:
	#Repairs:
		#AllSilverRepairs:
			_Silver_ **£6.95**
		@SilverBasicSolder
		@BasicSolder
##9ct:
	#Repairs:
		#All9ctRepairs:
		_9ct_ **£12.95**
		@9ctBasicSolder
		@BasicSolder
##18ct:
	#Repairs:
		#All18ctRepairs:
			_18ct_ **£14.95**
			@18ctBasicSolder
			@BasicSolder

##Silver:
	#Repairs:
		#AllSilverRepairs:
			#SilverChainRepairs:
				#AllOpenLinks:
					_Open Links_ **£8.95**
	@SilverChainRepairs
	@SilverOpenLinks
	@OpenLinks
				#AllHollowLinks:
					_Hollow Links_ **£8.95**
	@SilverChainRepairs
	@SilverHollowLinks
	@HollowLinks
				#AllRopeLinks:
					_Rope Links_ **£8.95**
	@SilverChainRepairs
	@SilverRopeLinks
	@RopeLinks
				#AllDoubleLinks:
					_Double Links_ **£9.95**
	@SilverChainRepairs
	@SilverDoubleLinks
	@DoubleLinks
-------
##9ct:
	#Repairs:
		#All9ctRepairs:
			#9ctChainRepairs:
				#AllOpenLinks:
					_Open Links_ **£12.95**
	@9ctChainRepairs
	@9ctOpenLinks
	@OpenLinks
				#AllHollowLinks:
					_Hollow Links_ **£14.95**
	@9ctChainRepairs
	@9ctHollowLinks
	@HollowLinks
				#AllRopeLinks:
					_Rope Link_ **£14.95**
	@9ctChainRepairs
	@9ctRopeLinks
	@RopeLinks
				#AllDoubleLinks:
					_Double Link_ **£18.95**
	@9ctChainRepairs
	@9ctDoubleLinks
	@DoubleLinks
-------
##18ct:
	#Repairs:
		#All18ctRepairs:
			#18ctChainRepairs:
				#AllOpenLinks:
					_Open Links_ **£14.95**
				#AllHollowlinks:
					_Hollow Links_ **£16.95**
				#AllRopeLinks:
					_Rope Link_ **£16.95**
				#AllDoubleLinks:
					_Double Link_ **£19.95**
-------
##Silver:
	#Repairs:
		#SilverJumpRingRepairs:
			#SilverJ/R's:
				#AllSilverRepairs:
					_Jump Ring_ 
					**£8.95**
					_End Ring_ 
					**£8.95**
					_Top Ring_ 
					**£8.95**
					_Top Ring & Jump Ring_ **£12.95**
					@SilverJumpRingRepairs
					@JumpRingRepairs
					@ChainRepairs
					@PendantRepairs

##Gold:
	#Repairs:
		#9ctJ/R’s:
			#9ctJumpRingRepairs:
				#All9ctRepairs:
					_Jump Ring_ **£12.95**
					_End Ring_ **£12.95**
					_Top Ring_ **£12.95** 
					_Top Ring & Jump Ring_ **£19.95**
	@JumpRingRepairs
	@ChainRepairs
	@PendantRepairs

##18ctJ/R's:
	#Repairs:
		#18ctJumpRingRepairs:
			#All18ctRepairs:
			_Jump Ring_ **£14.95**
			_End Ring_ 
			**£14.95**
			_Top Ring_ 
			**£14.95**
			_Top Ring & 
			Jump Ring_ **£24.95**
	@JumpRingRepairs
	@ChainRepairs
	@PendantRepairs

-------

#Charm Bracelet's	 

-------

#Safety Chain's

-------

#Gate/Hinged Bracelet's

-------
2

I just edited your post to mark the TaskPaper document text as code block.

I assume you are prepending all of your projects with # so you can also read document in markdown editor… but if not it’s extra and you don’t need them :slight_smile:

To your question… can you give me a concrete example of an exact search/price scenario. I see prices and tags, but I’m still not quite sure what your goal would be… also the way that you have things setup is a little different then I would expect. You include tags on lines that have other content… you have your tags on their own lines, their might be some reason for that, but generally that’s not the way that TaskPaper is supposed to work.

Anyway please give me a bit more detail on your end goal and hopefully I can help.

3

Hiya Jesse,

Thanks very much for your time, it is really appreciated.

I am trying to build a list of all my repair prices for our workplace where I am a jobbing jeweller, I’m constantly asked how much something is but alas my memory is absolutely shot at, so I love to use my tech to be my memory.

I want use Taskmator to tell me how much a particular repair is in two taps (Speed isn’t essential but it feels good if I can get to a any price within two taps when in Taskmator)

I doubled up on the Tasks/Projects with Tags so I could see which worked better, May be I need to looser/more generic with my Tags & Tighter/more specific with my Projects or vice versa.

Projects

Screenshot 2017-09-08 05.51.22.png1152×648 63.5 KB

Tags

Screenshot 2017-09-08 06.56.23.png1152×648 70.4 KB

So if I want a price for an Open Link in Silver, I would click “SilverOpenLinks” I would come to find it at £8.95, but then I wanted it for 9ct, I would just click “AllOpenLinks” and 9ct would appear, so it gets drilled down to any figure in any metal in an instant, in the end result I will be able to pinpoint location (Draw 1/Draw 5) quicker than I can look and find, think & remember where it is, and they will also have hot links in each variation so I can see the fluctuating prices as they change daily.

It may seem a tad like hard work for a few repairs but there is a bigger picture here, once I’ve/we have sussed this out I’m going to implement it through out my whole findings range (Jewellery Findings & Settings | Jewellery Parts | Cooksongold) with something like this

#Silver B/R’s, 5 Sizes, Plenty in Stock

(Bolt Ring’s)

All Findings below are priced as of 13th May 2017 from Cooksons,
0345 100 1122 or 0121 200 2120

5mm B/R Draw 1 £8.95 EA [5mm NVD C50X, @1.91 P/O 10] (Sterling Silver Bolt Rings Closed 5mm Pack of 10 - cooksongold.com)

6mm B/R Draw 1 £8.95 EA [6mm NVD C60X, @2.26 P/O 10] (Sterling Silver Bolt Rings Closed 6mm Pack of 10 - cooksongold.com)

7mm B/R Draw 1 £8.95 EA [7mm NVD C70X, @3.08 P/O 10] (Sterling Silver Bolt Rings Closed 7mm Pack of 10 - cooksongold.com)

8mm B/R Draw 1 £9.95 EA [8mm NVD C80X, @6.10 P/O 10] (http://www.cooksongold.com/Findings/Sterling-Silver-Bolt-Ring-Closed---8mm-Pack-of-10-prcode-NVD-C80X)

10mm B/R Draw 1 £9.95 EA [10mm NVD B10, @2.60 EA]
(Sterling Silver Bolt Ring Flat 10mm Open, Flat Clean Profile, With Open Jump Ring - cooksongold.com)

#9ct B/R’s, 4 Sizes, Some In Stock

(Bolt Ring’s)

All Findings below are priced as of 13th May 2017 from Cooksons,
0345 100 1122 or 0121 200 2120

5mm B/R Draw 5 £12.95 EA [NBD C50X, @9.25 P/O 6]
([9ct Yellow Gold Bolt Rings Closed 5mm 530 Pack of 6 Light Weight - cooksongold.com)

6mm B/R Draw 5 £8.95 EA [NBD C60X, @14.16 P/O 6]
([9ct Yellow Gold Bolt Rings Closed 6mm Pack of 6 Light Weight - cooksongold.com)

7mm B/R Draw 5 £14.95 EA [NBD C70X, @5.29 EA]
([9ct Yellow Gold Bolt Ring Closed 7mm Light Weight - cooksongold.com)

8mm B/R Draw 5 £15.95 EA [NBD C80, @7.69 EA]
([9ct Yellow Gold Bolt Ring Closed 530 8mm Light Weight - cooksongold.com)

Because as a Working Jeweller, I’m working with 9 different metals, (Sterling Silver, 9ct Yellow, 9ct Red, 9ct White, 14ct, 18ct Yellow, 18ct Red, 18ct White, 22ct & Platinum), and each finding (Bolt Rings, Trigger Fasteners, Claw Triggers, Dog Clips/Alberts, Earring Fittings, 20 different styles, Bracelet Ends, Bangle Spheres, Pendant Bails, Padlocks, Hasps, Safety Chains & Ring Clips) is in each of those different metals, if I could find any price to any finding with in two/3 clicks, that would save me a whole shed load of time each day, instead I’m scrolling through several spreadsheets to find these figures.

Hope this makes some sense.

I have tried this in many many apps including Omnifocus, OmniOutline, MWeb, Bear, Ulysses, amongst plenty of others non of which work as well as TaskPaper or Taskmator what you have in your favour (for me) is Themes “Dark Mode”, Adjustable Text Size, Tree Layout for Folders, Folders in Folders, Dropbox & available on all formats, which most are on the iOS 11 beta including iPod, iPhone 6s Plus & MacBook Air, Taskmator works on iPad Mini 1 which is on iOS 9.3.

I’m keeping an open mind as to how this could work for me, I’m willing to build from the ground up, with your assistance.

Sorry for the long winded reply, hope I didn’t bore you to death.

Thanks for your help Jesse.

4

Just a thought here, have your looked at a database? I used to use one called Panorama for many years. It was unique in that it was ram based and therefore extremely fast. Learning it’s language to code wasn’t too hard. But of course you would have to learn it to build a solution. Once you do, it sounds like it could give the results you are seeking.

Panorama by Provue

It took me a long time to learn that, just because one tool can do many things, doesn’t necessarily make it the best tool for the job. Maybe TaskPaper can do all this, and maybe not. But a database sure can.

5

Hiya David,

Thanks very much for that suggestion, that may be the answer, I will look into it. I have never coded before, using TaskPaper & coding app MWeb has been a breeze to use, but I want more functionality from it, I like/love TaskPaper for its simplicity.

Mark

6

It occurs to me to mention that if a database can do it then a spreadsheet can (probably) also do it, or come very close to doing it. With a database you can do much more with the result of your calculations and build custom interfaces and more.

But for what you have described if you have Numbers or Excel already you could try putting all those values on a spreadsheet. Have a sum field set to add all the values selected for a column and then when someone wants a price quote from you, just tick off the rows with the parts of the services that they are asking for and, et voila, you have your estimate. It’s still better and more customization can be done in a database but it might give you a basic idea.

… Oops, my bad, I was just rereading your post and you already go to several spreadsheets to get the results. So then yes, a database would be a good solution.

7

Interesting problem, thanks for writing it all out. First I probably still don’t fully understand problem, so any suggestions that I make could very well not really make sense. :slight_smile:

Here’s a question. Would it be possible to write out your database (maybe assuming a really long piece of paper) using a typewriter and hang it on the wall. Then find prices by just visually scanning that paper? If so how would you organize it?

The key would be to visually group items whose prices you need to compare into areas where it’s feasible to visually scan through the list.

If that would be possible, but actually posting on wall doesn’t make sense, then I think TaskPaper could help. On the other hand if there’s no way to visually organize your list like that… then TaskPaper might help, but I think their are better tools.

Or put more generally TaskPaper is good at navigating/visualizing big hierarchies. Taskpaper tags also allow you some ability to visualize other attributes across those hierarchies, but they aren’t really best tool to duplicate database functionality I think.

Looking at your original example the information density seems very low. For example it seems like the vast majority if your lines of content doesn’t actually contain a price… the information that you are actually looking for. That’s why I’m asking the typewriter question above… what’s the most visually dense way you could organize this information and still have it be useful. I think your choose is between a really long visual list (that TaskPaper could help with) or a database, which TaskPaper could help with maybe with tags, but really it’s probably not the best tool for that case.

If you can fit your data into information dense list then you can search by just navigating hiearchy, scrolling, visually scanning. If not then you’ll need a more database solution which is better for looking up information in many different ways, but adds the overhead of having to manage whatever search spec you need to actually find the item you are looking for.

8

Thanks for the in-depth answer,

You are correct,

Could you edit the first couple of examples for me, as to how it should look if you had done it, please?

I would say I’d like to see it as a long piece of paper, thats how I visualise it in my head thus the list is to long, so I thought in my infinite wisdom Projects & Tags would enable me to drill down to the info I need very quickly, you said in your reply to my original post,

How would you have set it up, just as a matter of interest?
Can you give/write me an example, maybe if I could be ever so cheeky, I could use that example, and build my list from there.

9

It’s a bit hard, because I can’t really understand many of the details in the first example. But the red flags for me are lots of redundant metadata lines. For example there are many headings that just say “Repairs:” and that fills lots off vertical space. In my mind your goal should be to have the vast majority of lines contains actual price information.

So for an example of a more compact way to maybe represent the same info. The following 15 lines represent “maybe?” the same information as the first 70 lines in your original example.

Basic Solder Repairs:
	Silver – £6.95
	9ct – £12.95
	18ct – £14.95
Silver Repairs:
	Open links – £8.95
	Hollow links – £8.95
	Rope links – £8.95
	Double links – £9.95
9ct Repairs:
	Open links – £12.95
	Hollow links – £14.95
	Rope links – £14.95
	Double links – £18.95
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10

Jesse,

Thank you very much, that is appreciated.

I owe you a beer.

Mark

1 Like