Zavala - An open source outliner for Macs, iPads, and iPhones

Posted by Maurice Parker
Oct 30, 2021 at 08:29 PM

In retrospect, I see what a poor choice of name “Row Metadata” is. It will do nothing but confuse most users and probably frighten some of them.

I like “tag(s)” for a name, but I’ve kind of backed myself into a corner there. I use “tag” to identify a way of categorizing and organizing outlines. Using it differently when applied towards rows is going to be confusing.

I’m kind of leaning toward the word “token”. As in, you can apply different tokens to a row to give it structured meaning. In a search field on iOS and macOS, we sometimes use what are called tokens to do structured searches. For example, in Mail.app if you do a search, Mail.app offers to limit your search to the subject field. You then end up with a token that has “subject” on the left and the search term on the right. That’s kind of what I am going after, so “token” mostly works.

As you point out, the one of the biggest weaknesses to this proposal is scanning for data visually. I will need to work on this some. One thing I do plan on doing is being able to search by metadata key and value. That way only the rows meeting a given criteria will be shown and the found metadata can be accentuated (probably by color) to make it stand out more. I concede that columns will probably always be superior for visual scanning.

Thank you for your input and your time, Satis. It is very difficult (impossible) to make well designed software in a vacuum. I really appreciate it when someone helps me get a different perspective.