Can you figure out this filtering challenge?

ghuth

Perhaps I’m having a braindead moment… but I can’t figure this out.

I want to list only the Projects which don’t have a child with the tag #next (which in this case would list only Project A).

If my outline is structured like this:

^ Project A
   [] Task A

^ Project B
   [] Task B #next

Can I achieve what I want with the current Legend Filtering abilities?

So far, I’ve found

Including #next in the search will do pretty much the opposite of what I want - listing only projects that DO contain a child with #next (it’s showing the project name because it shows all parents of any children tagged #next), however
including -#next will show all projects (everything), hiding only the children that have #next (ie the filter is applying to the projects and the children) which is of no use
I thought (is:project or (is:task #next)) might work well enough by showing me only the top level project and showing only any children that were tasks tagged #next … as then I could do a visual look. But it doesn’t seem to filter out any items that aren’t tasks or projects
I thought is:project is:task - did a reasonable job but discovered it’s hiding many projects… (although it still shows numbered lists for some reason) but this requires me to check the list whole list very manually to see if I can spot projects without child actions tagged #next.
(-is:complete is:project) or (-is:complete is:task) doesn’t work either - seems to show all items even if they aren’t either actions or projects…

Jay

Does this work?

is:project (is:task -#next)

That would show all items that have a project somewhere in their hierarchy AND have a child that is a task that’s not #next.

ghuth

Jay

Unfortunately no that doesn’t work as I’d hoped. It seems to miss two scenarios:

Project
___(No Actions)

And also

Project
___(sub) Project
______Task

I could potentially work around the second one by using the “(sub)” prefix consistently for sub-tasks - It may just need a second pane. But I don’t know how to work around the first scenario where there may not be tasks (or any items, for that matter).

Oh also, the hashtag in the filter box is being highlighted by the tag coloring - I don’t know if that’s deliberate but it’s not desirable IMO.

ghuth

Is there any more instruction available around advanced filtering than what I see in the app filtering hints and the introductory blog entry?

I’m just finding the using parenthesis and or statements don’t quite behave as I expect.