New filtering system

Jerud

A little departure from the above:

I just remembered a feature request someone else made that might make sense to “roll up” into this new-filtering-system change. I can’t find the post, though : (

The idea was to have “expand to X indent level” the way you can do with Grouped Rows in MS Excel (and other apps). You click a little “3” at the top, and the whole outline adjusts its expand-state to the 3rd indent level.

This could be approximated with a “heading level” filter. If we had filters for <h1> <h2> <h3> etc., they could be used to create this kind of result, albeit via a filter rather than a dedicated control. Maybe not 100% what the original user requested (it would only impact Headings, not all items)…but closer.

How about it? Could we get <h1> <h2> etc. filters – even just in the ‘advanced’ syntax?

Jerud

Legit BUG with the new system – Panes no longer update to reflect item changes as soon as you take focus from the item. Most changes seem to require fully switching to another board before items will disappear/appear due to filters acting on changes to text, prefixes, tags, priorities, etc.

Jay

I just released an update to change it back to an advanced mode toggle, but per pane. Next I’ll change the buttons in advanced mode to be text instead of icons and insert at the cursor rather than toggle between off/on/negated. I also changed advanced mode to underline instead of highlighting. I agree that advanced mode doesn’t need to be so colorful, but I do think it’s important to highlight in some way when the text is a valid filter? I also changed the colors to be a bit less intense. What do you think of that?

I’ll work on the bugs Jerud just reported first, then do those advanced tweaks and look into the issue with not expanding matches.

Jerud

USABILITY: I keep clearing my filters by accident. It’s recoverable by clicking ‘back’ but accidental button-clicks just drive me bonkers : )

The filter-text box doesn’t resize itself until the text fills it completely. This leaves a very small click target if you wish to place the cursor to add text to the end. If the box just resized itself a bit more aggressively (while there is still whitespace to the right of the text) that would solve it.

Jay

Jerud What are you doing that accidentally clears them? Should it be changed?

Jerud

BUG: compound filters don’t give expected results.
I am trying to show only items that are both tasks and also have priority. This filter used to work but now it doesn’t:

-is:task -pri:low+

The above string hides all tasks and all priorities, regardless of whether the item has both or just one condition.
So I thought maybe it was ORing them and tried inserting the AND manually:

Pane results are still the same – items matching only one condition are removed. Also note the glitch in filter text between the top filter box and the advanced textbox.

This is in my sandbox, all items are at root and no parents so inheritance doesn’t factor in.

Jay

Jerud Negating filters works a bit differently than positive filters - negations are run first and remove anything that matches, before running the positive filters. So -is:task -pri:low+ means “hide all tasks and hide all priorities”.

If you want to show tasks and priorities you’d want to remove the negations. So price:low+ is:task should work for that.

Or am I misunderstanding what you’re asking?

Jerud

BUG: After opening the Calendar filter (“OPTIONS” for an Agenda Pane), once you check or uncheck one of the calendars in the list, the main filter dialog disappears, leaving just the calendar-picker visible.

andrew

Jay Thumbs up to all of these changes.

Jerud

Jay Just responding to your questions, will have to test the new update tomorrow.

I keep clicking the “X” button when trying to place the cursor at the end of existing filter text because there’s so little whitespace separating the two. I guess the width of my Panes just happens to be exactly wrong for the amount of text I have in the filter (in concert with the icons displayed) so the text ends right at the edge of the box. The box doesn’t resize itself until it’s completely “full”

I don’t want to show items withpri:low+ AND is:task – I want to hide them – but ONLY if the items have both properties. If it’s just a task or just has priority, I want to keep it. I think what I want is more like:
-(pri:low+ AND is:task)

But I tried that and it had no real effect 🤔

Jay

The advanced mode tweaks were already in progress so I just finished them 🙂. In advanced mode the buttons change to text and insert the text at selection instead of toggling, so it doesn’t break grouping. And I added more options for dates. How do you feel about that?

andrew

Jay I’m not sure it is a good idea to try to auto-convert typing in non-advanced to buttons. For instance, I like to have a couple buttons toggled (not completed, is star) and then have advanced text like pri:high or before:tomorrow. When I start typing and enter pri:high it turns on the high priority button and deletes the text before I have the chance to type or. This happens even if I start as if I am enclosing in parentheses (pri:high. Also, if I have an existing pane, or create a pane with an advanced filter with pri:high or before:tomorrow it toggles the button and leaves or before:tomorrow and if I enclose the filter text in parentheses like this: (pri:high or before:tomorrow), the filter text ends up as (or before:tomorrow). Of course, I can just go to or stay in advanced mode and do it, but it is really nice to be able to use the buttons for all the AND terms and just use the filter text for OR terms. I also think in non-advanced mode, the filter text should always be treated as if it is enclosed in parentheses and treated as grouped terms, even if not explicitly entered as such, so entering this or that would always group the OR terms together.

I guess the other alternative is to not consider or allow any OR operator in the filter text in non-advanced mode but rather only treat all terms as AND terms (and treat OR as literal), but I personally like having the ability to use both buttons and OR logic in the filter text.

andrew

Jerud You had said you wanted to show tasks with priority, so I was a little confused. But if you want to hide tasks with priority, your -(pri:low+ AND is:task) should work but doesn’t. Perhaps negating parentheticals is not implemented yet. Instead, you can try -pri:low+ OR -is:task. That seems to work.

Jay

andrew Jerud Ok you got it! Negated groups works now, so -(pri:low+ AND is:task) should do what you’re looking for.

I’ve gotten a bit excited about making that work, so the bug fixes are coming next 🙂

Jay

I hadn’t thought to do negated groups like that, but it should be doable. I’ll look into that tomorrow. And I added more padding to the right of the filter in the last update. Is that better?

Jerud

Thanks for all this Jay…did something happen to the has:date filter? My Panes that already had it still show the icon, but it’s not available in the filters list?

webalstrom

@Jerud, would date:any do the trick? I saw that under the advanced options on my filter drop down menu. When I click on that all the items with dates come up

I am wondering how you got the “Option” line to show up. I don’t see that on my drop down menu.

Jerud

webalstrom date:any and date:none do work, but there used to be a button for them (right next to has: note). In my screenshot at the far top-left you can see the icon is still applied in this pane according to the small filter icons. But if I clear it, I can’t get it back.

The Option button only appears in panetypes that offer options. In this case, group-by-tag. It took me way too long to figure that out and I initially reported it as a bug 😞!

webalstrom

Jerud Thanks for the tip about the option button. It looks like other pane types have various options available. That is one thing I’ve noticed about Legend: there is a lot under the hood and learning what all the options are (and how to access them) can take a long time. I like all of this power, but I know I’m only using a fraction of it. I hope Jay and team will create a detailed (but not too complicated) user manual sometime in the not too disant future.

As far as the has:date filter goes, did Jay remove that since the other date filters are in the advanced options and are for premium/pro subscribers only?

Jay

andrew Basic mode doesn’t really work well with or or parentheses since it tries to move the icons to the front. Should it be less aggressive about rearranging icons and text and let them intermingle? I had that originally but it felt cleaner to have the icons all arrange to once side.

Another thing it could do is when you type in a ( or or convert to advanced mode automatically?

Jay

Removing date:any was accidental when I moved it to the “date” section when in advanced. It should be back now in the latest update. It also includes a big revamp of the system locking items in place while editing and after they change, and now they show a dashed outline instead of fading out. What do you think of that?

Question: Should locking matches work differently? It could:

Not automatically hide them, but show a button at the top of the pane with the number of items no longer matching. Clicking it (or a hotkey) would re-run the filters and hide non-matching items.
Show a button/progress bar of the countdown before hiding them
Fade out for 1.5 seconds (or a different amount of time) before disappearing
Something else?

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