Left Brtain Right Brain

TaskPaper
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I just started using TP3 again in my daily workflow. Not sure if it will stay yet. I would love to start getting more into tweaking the themes and trying other tricks but, here is my problem. We live in a left or right brained world. Software and operating systems tend to reflect this. Left brain is very logical, just the facts man. Yes, TP3 can change a theme, you just read the instructions, go to the xyz pages in the manual in sequence and affect code abc and then you restart, etc. Right brain is very visual, if you want to have a line change color text when a certain tag is entered just go here and change the line with the keyword you can search for. Test it with this pull down menu that is clearly labeled on the upper right corner. Easy.

Back in the day there were a couple of really great organizing tools that are no longer made. Fair Witness which became info Depot and another I can’t quite remember the name of. They worked because they were powerful and they were easy to work with.

TP3 is a great little app and the developer seems a really nice guy. The problem is, it is hard to figure out how to take it to the next level and actually play with it. I really would like to see a line change text color if I have an “@task” associated with it. But I cannot easily change themes right now. Testing what I have changed to test conditions seems to be not working. I have seen comments from the developer that this sort of things are on his top 10 list of things to change but really, making it more complex without making it more useful for the right brained crowd … why do that?

Right now TP3 has added the left hand column and the expand/collapse feature. I use simple tags to remind me if something is to be worked on (@task), is awaiting a decision outside my control (@wait), or is a possibility if other attempts fail (@possible).

I don’t use it for dates because I really do not understand how this is done in TP3. I once posted here that I would love to see more tutorials but I only received a single reply that we all use it differently or some such silliness. Returning to my posting point, TP3 does a lot more than many know how to use it for. What it can benefit from the most is, making it accessible to the right brain. There is no better place to start than to get that theme menu put into a drop down menu - or at least back in preferences like it used to be.

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I agree with most everything you say, though I’m still not certain that I’ll have a “fix” in anytime soon.

TaskPaper is (and likely always will be) two things: A very simple and flexible “todo list”, combined with an extremely flexible (and as a result) complex system just behind the scenes. I think in it’s current form the basic app is really simple. But unlike most apps if you want to customize and change things that’s also possible… but it can get very complex and hacky very quickly.

I agree that it would be nice to move theme changing from the complex to the simple side of things, I very much expect that I will eventually. But I can’t say when. Right now I see other things are more important, and so that’s what I’m working on. But I do see your point.

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I understand and I appreciate your honesty and your hard work. The first thing that comes to mind is collaboration. A mind that has created all the complexities that made this very nice app would not necessarily be the best mind for explaining it to others. That is in no way meant to be a criticism, it’s just that when I am completely immersed in something it is hard for me to describe it to others who need to hear about it. I sometimes have this problem

As far as selecting a theme goes, I still have themes in my collection from version 2 and I cannot tell which one is running and therefore, which theme I should be editing so I am unable to affect any theme changes so far in version three. Therefore I cannot test my results and therefore Themes remains unusable in version 3 for me so far. Putting a clear way to see what theme you have selected and which them you want to try to edit is a big deal. Even version 2 had this ability to select a specific theme in the preference settings. That is really my only urgency. The other suggestions were only my hopefully constructive observations. I very much appreciate your listening. Thanks.