Displaying search results without parent projects

TaskPaper
1

Forgive my naïveté, I am a newbie. Is it possible to return search results without their parent project or item?

If not, I would love the feature. When I have a big list of next actions, being able to see them without the clutter of their parent project would be wonderful.

Thanks!

2

There isn’t, and I’m not sure that I want there to be by default… I think for most use cases the context is really important.

Two possibile solutions:

  • Once I get scripting going though it would be pretty easy to generate such a view, though it would be in a separate document, not linked to the first document.

  • Once I get theming going it might (not sure yet) be possible to adjust the styling of the actual search result matches (vrs inserted ancestors) to make them stand out more, or make the ancestors fade into the background more.

3

Thanks for the reply. I am not a scripter. That said, I appreciate you not building in lots of features that are capable of being generated with scripts.

Also, I really appreciate you focusing back on Taskpaper. Its a really wonderful application that I am happy to pay for.

4

May I bump this one? I vaguely remember the FoldingText query extension doing this with a pipe character at the end of the query string (or something like this).

While this looks like an easily scriptable function, I think it should be a built-in feature. Sometimes you just need to generate and print a task list before hitting the road, for instance.

5

The trouble with enabling this as a default option in a live document is that I think it’s a confusing view and it adds a new mode that the user must be aware of. Filtered text documents a relatively unfamiliar UI concept, I want to avoid adding built in options for how they work.

But I think you can get the view that you want with this script:

function HideAncestorsTaskPaperContextScript(editor, options) {
  var hideItems = []
  for (let each of editor.displayedItems) {
  	if (each.hasChildren && !editor.isCollapsed(each)) {
		hideItems.push(each)
	}
  }
  editor.forceHidden(hideItems)
}

Application("TaskPaper").documents[0].evaluate({
  script: HideAncestorsTaskPaperContextScript.toString()
})
2 Likes
6

@jessegrosjean this works great, thank you! (That said, I am not convinced by your argument about the feature suggestion, much as I do see your point.)

1 Like
7

I’d just like to add my vote for this feature. I can’t speak for other people, but I don’t find the idea of a filtered list at all confusing – it’s exactly what I got with my “Do Now!” view in OmniFocus.

Indeed I find the interface more confusing with sometimes 3-4 levels of hierarchy above every task – what should be a list of 6–10 items can take up to 30–40 lines, more than fits on a single screen on my laptop

And also just a note that David Allen recommends writing out tasks as self-contained active statements

Lastly, may thanks nonetheless for the script – my problem is I don’t know what to do with it? Do I put it in TaskPaper as a saved search, or what?

Any chance this could be added as a selectable option (well buried in preferences, if you like!) for those who like to work this way?

1 Like
8

Please see this section in the users guide on using scripts (you can associated a script with a keyboard shortcut):

https://guide.taskpaper.com/using-taskpaper/using-scripts.html

9

Many thanks, works perfectly!

1 Like
10

Resurrecting this long-dead thread…

I’m trying to have a search with the parent nodes hidden, as well. I’ve tried the script given here by jesse and it’s not working, I’m guessing because the syntax has changed with more recent versions of TP. What is the current way to do this?

The error I get, fwiw, is hide_ancestors.scpt:0:44: script error: A identifier can’t go after this identifier. (-2740).

Thanks!

11

I just tested and that script still works.

I expect the issue is that it’s “JavaScript” and Apple’s script editor defaults to “AppleScript”. There’s a popup in the upper left corner of Apple’s Script Editor window where you can change the script type.

12

Well I guess I shouldn’t have tried to edit it in vim, then. :wink:

Thanks, that (mysteriously, magically, thanks apple) worked!

1 Like