I really appreciate GTDNext’s inheritance of tags. You can tag a higher-level entity, e.g. a big project, and the tag will then make lower entities appear/disappear as they should when you start to apply filters, as if you had applied the tag to each one of them.
This can be very useful and powerful feature, and not nearly as common as I once thought. In fact, Nirvana is the only other app I can think of that has this.
I just noticed however, that this inheritance seems to work only in the All Projects view. On the Next list, if such implicitly tagged actions appear there, they will not show up when I filter for that tag. Is this just a “beta polishing” issue, or is there a thought behind this? What’s the plan?
I actually am not sure I like tag inheritance in all situations. Yes, I like it when a project has a tag and then the child tasks inherit the tag within the same project. However the way it currently works we have tags inherited even for individual tasks, not in projects. So you create one single task, not at top level and then press enter to start a new task and you have the same tags. I’m not sure that is useful or event wanted in most circumstances. Comments?
For the next list - I also don’t usually want to inherit the tag. Many times the items in the next (and other) lists are from separate projects - so it really isn’t helpful for me to inherit tag.
I agree. I too am talking about automatic parent-to-child inheritance, not some “default/template” kind of mechanism when you create or move tasks, which I agree would be pointless and even counterproductive.
If a task has inherited a tag “properly” from its parent, why would this tag not be available for filtering on any list?
Right now, if in P&A I tag a project with TagAlpha, then when I filter the P&A list for TagAlpha I see all the tasks in that whole project, but if I filter the Next list for TagAlpha I see no tasks at all from that project - unless I have also tagged them individually; I had expected to automatically see the Next actions from that project. This is what gave rise to my original question.
To be clear, let me add that my question is one of curiosity and surprise more than actual need. GTDNext already has very strong features for organization - the unbounded hierarchy plus the parent-child inheritable area tags.
I do not know if I or anyone would really need parent-child inherited tags all the way. They could be useful, though, if someone does not like to make full use of the hierarchical features (e.g. if they want all the little projects at the very top) and if the area tags then are not enough (they’re currently mutually exclusive).
Parent-child inheritable tags would not be a top priority feature in GTDNext, if you ask me, thanks to the powerful hierarchy and area tags, but a nice extra safety to have available if need be. What struck me as odd was that it did not work as I had expected (as in Nirvana; just like GTDNext’s area tags), and that they worked in one list but not the other.
I also think that having a task inherit the tags of the project might be useful, but I agree that perhaps this isn’t a high priority for development and furthermore could create confusion as it sort of pre-supposes a use for tags. For example a tag that was “errand” shouldn’t be inherited while a tag that is say “bathroom project” should be.