Subject line says it all, but I’ll elaborate:
It would be nice to have a parameter for Smart Groups (and possibly Rules) that only adds a limited number of items to the group, sorted by a selected metadata dimension. A few examples:
- Give me the five most-recently-added unread items
- Give me only the first flagged item in each group in the selected group
- Give me the ten closest records according to postal code
Sure, you can effectively do this by only looking at the desired quantity of records in a group, but some searches can be overwhelming. This is particularly useful if it can be implemented per-subgroup, like in example 2 above, as the group hierarchy we use can be used to structure smart group queries to be more useful.
The inspiration for this might also help explain it. I have been experimenting with DEVONthink 3 as a task database for about a month now, and I actually love it (despite @BLUEFROG’s discouragement of doing this! Sorry Jim…). One thing I miss from OmniFocus, however, is the “First Available” rule on OmniFocus perspectives. In OF you can set a view to only show the first available task in selected projects. This returns a nice clean view of only the next things you should do, instead of overwhelming you with the list of dozens of actions you know you’ll eventually have to complete.
I realize I can sorta emulate this by scripting the production of lists in, say, markdown files—or by using Flagged items—but since I can imagine other use cases for a “First [x] items” or “Last [x] items” rule, I thought I’d suggest it.
Thanks!