'Move to Trash' in tags

[drtimhill]

Me again, with another “tags vs groups” issue in DT 3.x

When I’m working with items in a group, the ‘Move to trash’ and ‘Move all instances to trash’ commands work as expected (with my prior note about “instances” really being just “replicants”).

But when working with items in a group, things get a bit odd. If I choose a tag and then right-click an item, there is a ‘Move to trash’ command. But what does that command actually do? It removes the tag from the item.

I think this is pretty odd. Yes, I know what’s going on internally (the tag is just a disguised replicant, and move to trash moves the replicant etc). But it’s still odd to have ‘Move to Trash’ do that. Really the command should be ‘Remove tag’. I suspect that’s tricky to implement, as you would need to know the containing group, but it makes much more sense.

Is this just cosmetics? Nope. I get burned by this all the time. When I’m working in a group, ‘Move to trash’ does what I expect; it deletes the item (I rarely use replicants). But when I’m in a tag, it’s easy to forget I’m in “tag mode”, and I choose ‘Move to Trash’ and the item appears to vanish. But of course it’s just thrown the tag away.

Would be nice to see ‘Remove tag’ instead of ‘Move to trash’ when working in a group; makes much more sense to me.

[BLUEFROG]

But when I’m in a tag, it’s easy to forget I’m in “tag mode

I’m a little confused as to why when there are visual indicators from the Tags icon…

Perhaps a screen capture of your setup would help.

[drtimhill]

Here I’ve selected a tag (‘a-Interview’) and am working with the items that are tagged. Right click on one of those items (e.g. ‘Developer Interview Questions’) and up pops “Move to trash” in the menu. But of course, it doesnt do any such thing … it removes the ‘a-Interview’ tag (the item therefore vanishes from the view).

Now, I agree this is “technically” correct; the tag is just a special group, so the item is really a replicant “in” the tag, so yes, Move to trash is moving the replicant to trash just like it would if it was a replicant in a “real” group.

But DT now tries very hard to makes tags “tag-ish” not “group-ish”, and “Move to trash” seems to me to be “Remove Tag” when done for a tag view item.

I rarely use real replicants, so for me (and I suspect many others), when I’m working in a group (not a tag), and click on an item in that group, “Move to trash” really does mean “delete item”. So later when I’m working in a tag view, muscle-memory kicks in, and I choose “Move to trash” and it LOOKS like I have deleted the item, whereas I just removed the tag. Given tags are much more “tag-ish” now, it seems odd and unintuitive that “Move to trash” is labeled this way. If it said “Remove tag” that would (a) be more descriptive and (b) remind me that I’m working in a tag view and not a group view.

[drtimhill]

This is still tripping me up badly when using DT. It’s incredibly confusing, since ‘More to Trash’ means different things depending on the view you are in, which means you have to be incredibly vigilant:

1. View the “contents” of a tag. ‘Move to Trash’ removes the tag from the item, but doest move it to the trash.
2. View the contents of a group. ‘Move to Trash’ moves the item to the trash, removing it from all the tags.

I really think ‘Move to Trash’ should be named ‘RemoveTag from Item’ when you are in tag view (yes, I get this is more complex when the item only exists in the tag, but that almost never happens now).

Quick repro:

1. In a database, click on any tag to view which items are tagged with that tag.
2. Right-click in the list of items in the tag, and choose ‘New > Rich Text’ to create a new item (or anything else, it doesnt matter when the item is).
3. As expected, the item is created, tagged with the tag and auto-magically placed in the Inbox for the database.
4. Still in the same tag item list view, right-click the item and choose ‘Move to Trash’. The items vanishes from the tag.
5. Examine the Inbox … the item is still in the Inbox. There is nothing in the trash.

This is pretty odd. Yes, it kinda-sorta makes sense given the way tags work behind the scenes. But what ‘Move to Trash’ Is actually doing (from a user standpoint) is ‘Remove Tag from Item’. Calling it move to Trash is very misleading.

[BLUEFROG]

@drtimhill

Right-click in the list of items in the tag, and choose ‘New > Rich Text’ to create a new item (or anything else, it doesnt matter when the item is).

Why would you be doing this?

[pete31]

To delete a record and all its replicants from within a tag:

Press ⌥ and use menu Data > Move All Instances to Trash

or

Press ⌥ and use the contextual menu Move All Instances to Trash

[drtimhill]

Perhaps I didn’t make it clear … the process I gave was just a repro.

Scenario: I have a datbasea that contains a group “G1”, and a tag “T1”. I create a new item “foo” (doesnt matter what it is), place it in group G1, and tag it with tag T1.

Use case 1: In the Navigate sidebar, I click on the “G1” group to select it. In the main view (central pane) I see the “foo” item listed. I right-click on it and choose “Move to Trash”.

Result: The item is moved to the Trash and removed from the G1 group. When the Trash is emptied, the item will be gone, and will also vanish from the T1 tag.

Use case 2: In the Navigate sidebar, I click on the “T1” tag to select it. Again, in the main view I see the “foo” item listed. I right-click on it and choose “Move to Trash”.

Result: The “T1” tag is removed from the item, but it remains in the “G1” group and is not moved to the Trash.

It is use case 2 that messes me up. The command is “Move to Trash”, but it very clearly does not move the item to the Trash. The very same command “Move to Trash” does two very different things depending on where I’m viewing the “foo” item. This is not at all intuitive.

The problem here is that, when I’m viewing a tag, “Move to Trash” simply removes the tag from the item. Logically, this makes sense when you understand the DT tag system, but the name of the command, “Move to Trash” is misleading. It should be “Remove Tag xxx” or something like that.

And it does bite me … again and again. When I’m working in DT, and cleaning things up, its perfectly natural to right-click an item that I want to delete and choose “Move to Trash” to delete it. And, most of the time it works. But if I’ve selected a tag in the sidebar, “Move to Trash” doesnt do any such thing. And a week later, I’m scratching my head wondering why all those items I deleted (or thought I had) are not deleted. I have to keep mentally worrying about what view I’m in to try to figure out what “Move to Trash” really means. And I don’t really think I should need to do that.

[james288]

I’m having the same problem. Spend a bunch of time cleaning house, using command-delete to “Move To Trash” and then find none of those items were actually moved to trash.

It shouldn’t be called “Move to Trash” (or use the same keyboard command) if it doesn’t Move to Trash.

[BLUEFROG]

Where are you using Command-Delete?
If it’s in the Navigate sidebar, it will not work there. It will work in the item list.

[james288]

Sigh. You’re right. It is working now.

I spent an hour yesterday trying to figure out why command delete would NOT move the item to trash. I tested it probably 20 times, and restarted DT a few times too. Tried using the keyboard command and also selecting from Data > Move To Trash. Verified databases, made sure things were synced.

I’m referring to selecting the item in the main item list, after navigating to it through the tag sidebar, exactly as @drtimhill described.

My solution was to build a keyboard maestro macro to always choose “Move All Replicants To Trash” when using command delete. But now it works fine.

[BLUEFROG]

Glad to hear it

[james288]

It’s back and I figured out (one way) to reproduce it.

Start with a duplicated file with multiple tags.

Command delete or Data > Move to trash one of the copies. Notice the title stays colored.

As is copy in trash

Empty trash. Title of original still colored, the copy still exists. Navigate to other tags where it exists, have to “move to trash” from each one before it finally moves the item to trash with a strike-through and finally deletes as expected…