Saved search: notes and lists outside projects

A perspective which you might call something like:

  • Miscellaneous
  • Single Actions
  • Lists outside projects, or
  • General non-project notes

(In my sidebar it’s just Misc, at the moment)

    Misc @search(/(not @type=project\)/descendant-or-self::*)

The single leading / specifies unindented lines at the top level of the outline – not enclosed by any project – children only of the TaskPaper file itself.

And, of course, a simpler saved perspective/search like:

    Top level @search(/*)

shows us all elements at the top level of the tab-indented outline (without their descendants):

  • Top level projects (without any indented sub-projects)
  • Miscellaneous top level lists and notes (as above)
  • Perhaps any unindented @saved searches

Or, if we want to exclude the searches from the view, but see all other top level notes, lists and projects at a glance (without their descendants):

    Top level (except searches) @search(/not @search)
2 Likes

Hi,
this looks really great, but: if you do it this way, how do you structure your different areas of life? I’ve created for instance one project “dad:” “husband:” “account manager:” and stuff like that. So to make a use of that all items are indeted between their respective AOR. The Misc search doesnt work here (but it would be cool, if it would!). For me it would be nice if it shows all items that are once indented without having children. But I don’t know if this is easily done… I’m still learning here and I’m not a guru at scripiting or such stuff at all :slight_smile:

The search language is rich enough to do more or less whatever you want, I think.

once indented without having children

do you mean as in a search like:

/*/*

( Viewing lines that have zero or one indent, but hiding anything further indented ) ?

Yeah, exactly. Just trying to figure out how to not show projects then - but for the start: really cool. Thanks!

I think whatever our search results are, the ancestral context of the matched items always remains visible.

Yeah, that might be and would be fine. But I’d like to not see any indented project.

Tried to work with:
(/(not @type=project)/descendant-or-self::*)

but I cannot figure out how this works.

You can think of a nodepath as a series of one or more alternations or pairs:

(outline relationship)(node-type filter)(outline relationship)(node-type filter) etc

So something like this is two pairs (two alternations):

/*/(not @type=project)

First:

/           first level under the 'virtual root' of the outline
*           any kind of line

Then:

/                                    next level down
(not @type=project)      any kind of line but projects

The filter you have experimented with has the same structure:

outline relationship step: /
line filter step: (not @type=project)

then again,

outline relationship step /descendant-or-self::
line filter step: *

/(not @type=project)/descendant-or-self::*

So its giving you unindented non-project lines, with all that descends from them

2 Likes

Thanks for your help! That really helped me a lot. I think I nearly understood what this does :slight_smile:

SingleItems @search(/*/(not @type=project\)/descendant-or-self::*) does the trick for me.

Now I’ll get some orga into my sidebar and then all is fine. Thanks a lot!

2 Likes

Sorry, to revoke that thread. If I want to hide all the done tasks how will I have to enter this?

SingleItems @search(/*/(not @type=project\)/descendant-or-self::*)

I’m just too stupid to get this done.

No, it’s just tricky if you want do do custom things like that. TaskPaper has super simple default behavior… but also the power to customize (and with that the power to be very complex) :slight_smile:

Anyway …

To fix that search so it’s recognized as a tag and shows up in the sidebar you need to escape all ) AND (added recently) (. Like this:

SingleItems @search(/*/\(not @type=project\)/descendant-or-self::*)