A 'Daily' Pane?

Bigspud

I became accustomed to the the workflow of another outlining tool on a project last year (roam).

It has a ‘pre-defined’ outline based on dates. Ie, a new outline opportunity every day as it arises.

The Legend calendar doesn’t really handle adding notes on it directly. In fact that’s a bug report. > if you choose to add a note to the cal item, but not add the item to the outline, then the note isn’t accessible again…<
and the dates as a pane wont allow direct outlining on them as an item… only date tagged items, while a nice visual outline, doesn’t give scope to write a journal entry, for example.

I know I’ve likely missed something trying to config this kind of result, Happy to be informed of my amateur-ishness!

I’ve been using the moo.do (moo.no.more RIP!)for a few years, but I’ve only recently had the wisdom to tell the other shiny products to go away. I’m saying happily, I found the stuff of legend right here!

Bigspud

oh, another thing…
Over the years, I’ve added date to items to signify, well, a date. yet I cant stop any pane considering this as a task that is overdue in any other life.
It kinda carries on from the post above, the need to signify dates without the assumption of a task.
Again! happy to be corrected if I’ve missed something!

LauraH

Hrm; so if I’m reading right - you’re wanting to be able to insert a date (ie: ! and choose a date from the date picker) but then not have it show as overdue, in calendars etc? Simple answer: That’s not possible. It sounds like you’re trying to take a paradigm from another program; but it won’t transfer directly to Legend.

I date things all the time - but I simply write the date in as text. I only use the date picker if it IS an item I want to see on the calendar, as overdue, etc.

Potential Work Arounds:

Date things, but just write the date (don’t use the date picker)
Date things, but make sure the date is the FIRST thing on the line, and use a date that will sort correctly. (ie: 2021.08.24). Then view your document in list view and sort it A-Z. That will take all the items with this date format at the front, and correctly sort them into date order for easy browsing.
Keep a separate document for journal entires. That way any “overdue” dated items won’t clutter up your “working” document.
Tag entires that are dated as journal entires. Then easily filter out all of them when you do want to see only non-journal dates.
Use the “task” prefix for anything that is a task; then filter your panes to show only tasks. (And therefore not see anything with a past date.)

Legend won’t do exactly what you’re asking - but it is such a flexible and powerful program; hopefully something in the above suggestions meets the need you’re trying to fill.

Bigspud

LauraH Legend won’t do exactly what you’re asking - but it is such a flexible and powerful program

Having a date not be assumed to be a task would be the definition of flexible and simple…
I kinda get that it’s not possible at the moment… I guess I asking for some thought on precepts of the current data structure. I’m guessing that plenty of users would be curious over the reqason of the current constraint.
That being said, tags are ok at getting the job done, as you say….

LauraH

Possibly Helpful:

I do create a “today” bullet in my outline almost every day. I use it for a plan for the day, along with notes and such of the day. (Sounds similar to the use case you outline)

I use a “today” bullet - so I can point to it in various panes and views and not have to refocus them every day. I create a bullet under “today” with today’s date written out (NOT the date picker). Then add whatever I need to for that day. When done, I shift tab to move the dated bullet out to the “master list”, and create the new daily bullet in my “Today” place.
My system ends up looking like this:

Daily Lists
- TODAY
  - Tuesday, 24 August
- Monday, 23 August
- Sunday, 22 August
- Saturday, 21 August

Jerud

Frankly what I’m curious about is your reason for using date tag when it’s not a task. Not to be a jerk, I just need a little more help understanding your use case. Tagging with a date lets you sync to Gcal, and perform some date-specific filtering operations such as before: after: etc. So unless you specifically needed those functions, it should be fine to type in 2021-08-25 as plaintext. It’s hard for me to imagine that you just prefer using the date picker…i’m not really a fan of its current incarnation : )

I’m sure you have an excellent use case and am curious to hear it. Without knowing more about it though, there are a few things you can try if the primary issue is these items showing up in your Agenda.

Keep the non-task items in a document separate from your genuine tasks, and point your Agenda Pane to the doc with the genuine tasks. This will only work if the non-task items are NOT synced to Gcal. (e.g. are “local” events).
Alternatively, just filter out “local” events from your Agenda Pane. This only works if you DO sync your genuine tasks to Gcal.
If your use case requires that you do sync these non-task items to Gcal, then send all the non-“task” items to their own calendar in your Google account. Then set up your Agenda Pane to filter out that calendar. This is admittedly a pain because you have to now pay attention to which calendar your events are being synced to every time you enter a date – I have this friction myself in my own workflow – but it might solve your question…

Bigspud

Jerud
There was no jerk-iness in there! it was totally valid question.
outlining in general is a philosophy of iterant demarcation of thought/time/priority/etc…
So that we come to work in this environment is a base level acknowledgment that the structures we define important are laid out for the very reason that we need to come back to them.. I dont presume that tomorrow nothing but a ‘task’ in life.
LIke @“webalstrom” comments wanting start and end dates, the ways you could use them are as infinitely diverse as the hierarchies that we already create…. but that would mean the use cases of date ‘types’ are also infinite.. when I read his reply, I was thinking, I’d quite like the ‘do’ date.. the date I will action a task over a deadline, see another one!

days overlay their immense power over our lives and work, I’m not trying to be esoteric here, just that in some way I’d like a pane that autocreates the blank slate of every new morning into the reality of complex workflows that we end up with in legend. My work is primarily creative, and wading into a heavily structured document to get started with my creative process isnt that enjoyable…
A default timestamp on each entry, then being aggregated into a “chronological” pane rather than a tag assuming a task to be sent to calendar, could give views on progression of work that would also be valuable…..

If roam was doing emails and proxy pipeline management, I’d probs still be working there, but it’s a silo for thoughts, not a work platform like Legend is for what I can achieve with the emails and calendar functions… Assuming a date to be a task, and not having a context as @webalstrom points out, just kinda seems like one of the imposed structures that the form of these documents is trying to steer away from, not towards…. but I’m just a writer, not no expert in things of knowledge management..

-The date picker sure needs work. agreed.
-and yes yyyy-mm-dd is a VERY decent approach I’m already using…
~ but, it’s now 5am and my oldest lad has his mates over for a 16th birthday, and I gotta go check the ‘carnage’ of last night……

webalstrom

I understand wanting to have date tags that don’t sync to the calendar, but even more (for my use case) having different kinds of dates. As Legend is right now (and this was true with Dynalist when I used that app), there are just “dates” and the app can’t differentiate what kind of date it might be. I would like to have a start date, a due date, an event date and maybe just a plain date date:

Start and due are fairly obvious, and having both would allow users to search for when they should begin an activity and when it must be completed by.
An event date would be for a meeting (perhaps with a time attached) and could be in the future (for a schedule meeting) or in the past, after the meeting is over but still with the notes from that meeting to give a chronological context to the notes.
Plain dates could be used for anything else, such as a journal entry or a calendar system a user has built in Legend.

Having all three be iterations of the official date would then make them searchable/filterable so a user could find all start dates without having to sift through due dates. Each task/node could have both a start and due date and perhaps even the date the meeting was when the task was assigned. This could be done by having dates be associated with a tag, either a set of defined tags or more open and let the user create any tags they wanted (I’m not sure how hard either would be since I’m not a coder!). This could be similar to how the Mac app Taskpaper handled dates as a property of a due or start tag.

What I am doing now is using the date for mostly start dates. I don’t use Legend for my calendar, so I don’t have event dates, but I would probably start using Legend for scheduling if there were differentiated dates. For due dates or meeting dates, I create a tag, such as “#due2021-10-01”. This way I can click on a tag and see what is due that day. Also, by writing out the date in year-month-day order, I can search for “#due2021-10” and see everything that is due in October. This could also be done by using week numbers #due_week40″ if more granularly was needed. This system works, but it would be easier to use the Legend date filtering language (before, after, between, etc) and make it possible to search for a due date vs. a start date.

Bigspud

I usppose if we had a calendar view that was full width and scrolling by days, that allowed outlining input into it, rather than items dragged into it only, then I’d be super McHappy! does that kind of use in the cal view make any sense?

Jerud

In 4 years of using Legend I’ve found it can nearly always do what I need – albeit not quite how I imagined. The learning curve is tough, but trying to “make it do what I want” has pushed me to better understand the tool’s capabilities. For sure, we’ll always be able to come up with more ideas – you should see some of the whoppers I’ve asked for (and even worse, the ones I haven’t!) – but as it stands today Legend is already wildly capable and flexible.

Try playing with some of the nuggets below and see if you can parlay any of them into a system that meshes with your personal workflow. Legend lets you filter on nearly everything, so it’s usually possible to build a Pane that shows you exactly what you want:

Legend stores three dates for every item automatically: created, modified, and completed. You can see them by right-clicking on any item, or by using specialty Panes (Group-by-Complete, -Modified, and -Created). They are not user-editable.
The “event” date is optional and fully editable, of course – it’s the one we usually mean when we talk about an item’s “date”. Any item with an event date can be synced to a Google Calendar. This can be set to happen automatically upon adding the date. You can sync to different calendars within the same account. These events have durations, can span multiple days, and so therefore do have an end date – but you cannot explicitly set that date as in a “due date”. Events show up as “overdue” in Agenda Panes based upon their end-date passing, not their start date…so you can kind of use this to track due-dates.
Working extensively with start/end dates is more of a Gantt chart / MS Project type of functionality, which is outside of what Legend can do. You may want to look at some of the web-based Gantting tools out there, which you can ‘connect’ to Legend by pointing both apps at the same Google Calendar. I have done this in the past (using TeamGantt), it worked rather well but ended up being overkill for what I was doing.
Calendar and Agenda panes only show items with dates. You can filter them to show or hide items based on which Google Calendar they are synced to, as well as whether they are synced to Google or are just Local.
You can filter OUT all items that have a date from any Pane, as well. This one is tricky because there isn’t a button for it, but I use it all the time. Type in to the filter text field (without the quotes): “-after: 1900”. Similarly you can filter to show only items that DO have a date, by removing the “-” from that text string.
Consider using the “Task” prefix to differentiate between items that have dates but aren’t actionable and those that are. I use this extensively; it’s quite effective. Remember you can filter any Pane to only show items that are Tasks, only items that aren’t Tasks, or all items.
There IS a one-day, full-width Calendar you can add items into directly! Create a new Board and insert a Calendar Pane. Change the Pane to 1-day display type. Drag the edge to full width. Double-click inside the calendar area to bring up a “new item” dialog box. Voila!