Hi Andrey, ah yes.. I hadn't though of all these instances. Seems to me that the Dependencies functionlity could potentially cause lots of problems for people and if it is unintentionally misused. Indeed, it may undermine a users reliance on MLO if it resulted in tasks seemingly inexplicably disappearing from the ToDo list. I really think this is a very important issue to resolve.
To my mind, dependency crucially only works if the dominant task is not prohibited from being shown in the ToDo view. A conflict occurs either when the dominant task is hidden from ToDo at the outset, or is subsequently hidden in some way. The optimal solution, in my opinion, is that conflicts are prohibited: that MLO point blank refuses to allow any change to the outline if it results in a conflict with dependencies, and additionally throws up a warning/explanation. This prevents dependencies being unintentionally misused and forces the user to change permissions (outline structure or existing dependencies) in some way before MLO will allow the change. Eg: A user sets a folder as a dominant task: "ACTION REFUSED. Reason: You have selected a dominant task that cannot be completed." A user sets a parent as a dominant task: "ACTION REFUSED. Reason: You have selected a dominant task that cannot be completed." A user tries to hide a branch with a dominant task embedded within it: "ACTION REFUSED. Reason: You have a dominant task in the branch." A user sets a subordinate task as a dominant task: "ACTION REFUSED. Reason: You cannot select a dominant task as a dependency." A user tries to move a dominant task to a hidden branch: "ACTION REFUSED. Reason: You cannot hide a dominant task" A user tries to move a branch with dominant task to a hidden branch: "ACTION REFUSED. Reason: You cannot hide a dominant task" etc etc. As you say, this isn't a trivial change as it means that you would have to monitor whether a task is dominant. If a task has a property which shows:- a) if it is dominant (ie has other tasks that depend on it - doesn't matter which) and b) if it is NOT able to be visible in the to-do view then it could be as simple as preventing changes in MLO if they result in both of these conditions being true for any task in the outline, as a result of any given change. As an alternative for a short-term solution, would it be possible to have an icon indicating whether a task has a dominant task that cannot be completed? Your suggestion of indicating this in the Dependency Box would also be welcome, It wouldn't be that visible but at least a user would have some indication of what was going on. Don
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