#36 Overwrites priority of all tasks in todo.txt and does not respect order

[Marcus Widerberg]

Hi! Thanks for creating this, wonderful idea!
Just downloaded, created new empty mindmap, and synced with my existing todo.txt file.
I am glad I made a backup copy!
The actions performed by GTDsync on todo.yx were severly intrusive, I quickly noted two things:

1. (as title of this ticket) It overwrote the priority of all tasks, so that they all had priority (A).
2. It did not respect the order of the tasks in todo.txt but did a complete overwrite, with a sort by priority.

This makes it very difficult to use with other tools, of which there are many.

Propose to fix atleast (1) for it seems like a bug, and improve behavior so that it respects fileorder (2).

Again, thanks for an awesome project - this can really rock!

[Henk van den Akker]

Hi Marcus,

Thank you for your interest in GTD Sync.

Your first point is not a bug, it is the way it is designed with GTD in mind. Read section 'priority' on wiki page [Characteristics] for a further explanation.

Since there were more people complaining about this, I might add a feature for accomodating priorities A, B and C. Unfortunately i do not have time for development at the moment and I have some other features that I would like to realise first.

Concerning your second point, you have to realise that GTD Sync does not edit the todo.txt file directly, like most other tools, but synchronises with it. To be more precise: it first imports new actions and changes from the todo.txt file into the mind map and then exports all next actions from the mind map to a todo.txt file that overwrites the old todo.txt file. There is no specific sorting applied, but the order of the next actions is determined by the order they appear in the mind map. Preserving the original order in the todo.txt file is impossible or at least very complicated.

Could you explain why changing the order of the next actions in the todo.txt file is a problem? I also use other tools for todo.txt, but I never found this to be a problem.

You seem to be an existing todo.txt user. Under the small header 'Todo.txt user' on wiki page [Synchronise your GTD mind map with todo.txt] you find some more typical GTD Sync behaviour to take into account.

Cheers,

Henk

[Marcus Widerberg]

Hello, thanks for your extensive and thoughtful reply.

I have read the doc, thanks for the link. Reading it and knowing the behavior, it seems you think it is ok to destroy whatever priority is in the users todo.txt file since you believe it should not be processed. I have a hard time accepting that complying with GTD forces your tool to overwrite any and all priorities in my todo.txt file. That seems a bit far fetched. Irrespective of how you want to apply GTD and use the todo.txt format, I cannot see why you would want to design a sync tool to overwrite and thus remove existing data. If I am using priority and you feel that in your tool you dont want to process that - that is fine. But from not processing it to removing any data that is not used is not the same, a well behaving sync tool would not destroy any data it does not like, in order to play well with other tools. (As a sidenote, of course, this behavior also does not respect and thus breaks the todo.txt format)

As to your second point, you write "impossible" which is clearly incorrect, and you say "very complicated" which may be the case given your choice of tooling. I accept it is more complicated than having the tool simply rewrite (and as discussed above overwrite) whatever it wants to. Certainly, many other well-behaved todo.txt tools will respect the users todo.txt file and order.

Again, I think that your tool is really awesome, and I am trying it out for a certain project right now.

But having a extremely opinionated and downright rude sync tool that does not play well with other todo.txt tools, it makes it hard to be confident in it and whats worse it makes it hard to work with other todo.txt and thus limits the use. In essence, I am not allowed to use priority if I want to use your tool. When using todo.txt I have two options for priority - the established priority syntax (A-> ...) and file order. Not all tools play nice with file order, but the original scripts and many do. But AFAIK all tools do respect the users wish to use priority. Your sync tool disallows both options.

Honestly, I am not sure I can convince you. But it would be truly awesome to have a well behaving mindmap sync tool, that you can hook up to an existing todo.txt file to a mindmap and sync without worrying that what is already there is destroyed.

Take care, best regards! /marcus

[Henk van den Akker]

Hi Marcus,

If you want to convince me about something, you really should tone down a bit. I understand that you are angry because the software is not doing what you expect. I am not OK with the fact that you make wrong assumptions about what I think or believe ("it seems you think it is ok to destroy..."). I am also offended by the fact that you call my software an "extremely opinionated and downright rude sync tool". You say that to something I have put a lot of thought, care and dedication in. Since I am the one who created the software you are actually saying those things about me. Did I in my reply say anything like that to you?

I think the problem is that you are not able to look at this from different perspectives. I would like to illustrate this with the following cartoon.

You could say that I developed GTD Sync as a 6 and that you regard it as or expect it to be a 9. I know two ways in which our perspective differs.

Firstly, I developed GTD Sync from the perspective of GTD. I said that in my previous reply and if you read my wiki you can see it is all about GTD. From your perspective I can see you need a more generic tool, i.e. a tool that supports priorities. From your side I do not see any effort to look at it from my perspective. Of course I do not think it is OK to mess up the priorities in your todo.txt file. It is just that I developed the tool specifically for GTD practioners and do not expect them to have priorities in their todo.txt files. If you would like to have a different, more constructive conversation, you could acknowledge that this is a GTD tool, that you are doing something different than GTD and that you would like the tool to be more generic.

Secondly, I developed GTD Sync as a tool that syncs a GTD mind map to an external list and back. Todo.txt is just a vehicle for the external list. The produced todo.txt file is fully in line with the todo.txt rules and thus suitable for other todo.txt tools. You expect the tool to sync any todo.txt file to a mind map and back, leaving order and priorities intact. You regard it as a full-fledged todo.txt tool, comparing it to other todo.txt tools. It is not a todo.txt tool, but a tool using todo.txt supporting only the parts of the standard todo.txt format that are relevant for its purpose.

To elaborate a bit more on that, GTD Sync started of with another Freeplane add-on: GTD|Freeplane. GTD|Freeplane produced a list of next actions in a Freeplane window. I liked the set-up of the GTD|Freeplane mind map and wished I could use the list on my phone to tick off next actions. I found that todo.txt would be a suitable vehicle for this. Also the elements in the mind map like context and project mapped quite well to the todo.txt format. In the GTD|Freeplane mind map there is an icon "Today" that indicates that a next action has to be done today (by the way, this is not typically GTD). Because I wanted to keep GTD Sync compatible with GTD|Freeplane I decided to map "Today" to priority (A). Because priorities are not part of the GTD|Freeplane mind map and not of importance for GTD I decided to map any other todo.txt priorities to "Today", effectively turning any priority to priority A. For the intended use of the tool, where todo.txt is just a vehicle, that was a good design decision, it keeps things as simple as possible. From your perspective, I can fully understand, it is a disaster.

Based on your comment I think it would be an improvement if GTD Sync would support all todo.txt priorities. I have added feature [#37] and written out all scenarios. It has quite some impact. Unfortunately I do not have so much time and there is some other features with higher priorities I have to release first. I think I will be able to add this feature somewhere in the second half of next year or later.

With regard to the order of the next actions in todo.txt, I still think you cannot compare sync tool with a edit tool. Just imagine you have to sync two instances of todo.txt files with each other, how would you sync the order? The only way I can think of is to make the order of one of the files leading. In the case of GTD Sync the order of todo.txt file exported from the mind map is leading. This order is determined by the location in the mind map: first from top-right to bottom-right, then from top-left to bottom-left. I think you should be able to rearrange the nodes in the mind map in a way that leads to the desired order in the todo.txt file. Once you got this right the order won't change.

Cheers,

Henk