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[Bryce Harrington <345575@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

This is related to but separate from bug #497164.

497164 covers the case where tasks need to be ordered sequentially due
to one task being dependent on another.  For instance, "Buy gift", "Wrap
gift", "Give present" all must be done in a strict order.  This can be
done in gtg currently by creating a "task ladder" using parent/child
task relationships.  Thus that bug is more of a UI presentation issue;
it holds no implications for changes to gtg's internal task storage.

But this bug 345575 covers a slightly different case, which is that you
have a set of tasks which don't need to be done sequentially, but you do
want to visually think of them as a list in a particular order.  For
instance maybe you have "Buy gift for Alice", "Buy gift for Bob", "Buy
gift for Charlie", "Bake cookies", "Chop firewood", "Decorate chrismas
tree", and you wish to organize your tasks with the first three before
the last three (since you need a bit more time to do the shopping and so
on).

While you do want some ordering in this case, you *don't* want the
laddered parent/child style of relationship as described by 497164, for
a few reasons.  First, parent/child ordering is quite buggy - but
nevermind that.  Second, when Work View is on, you can only see the
first task, but it's likely the user would like to buy all three gifts
at the same time when they go to the mall, so that's not so helpful.
Third, there could also be an opportunity, such as her boyfriend
offering to chop the firewood right now, that you'd like to be able to
take care of now; but if you mark it done it marks done all the tasks
before it in the laddered task list.  Finally, it's likely you'd want to
insert more tasks, such as "Buy gift for Donna", but the UI for
inserting a task into a task ladder is rather cumbersome (and currently
in trunk rather buggy).

Currently, I think child tags are not given any particular sort ordering
under a parent.  I guess in the taskeditor maybe it keeps track of the
order they were initially entered in, but it's not guaranteed; I have
found they can be reordered in some cases (like if you add a subtask
from the browser).  In any case, there really is no mechanism for the
user to modify the ordering.

Thus, this bug is more geared around the idea of changing gtg's internal
task storage to be more explicit in the way the tasks are ordered in a
given parent.  This does not imply any sort of dependency relationship
or any other UI effect except that the tasks should have an explicit
ordering that the user is able to influence.

I'd go further and suggest that the browser should also maintain this
ordering when showing tasks in tree form (i.e. when Work View is turned
off), if no other sorting scheme is in effect.  This maintains
consistency with the task editor and probably is least-surprise as far
as user expectations go.

If this issue is solved, it may give a better solution to some of the
more lightweight task ordering use cases (like given above) and thereby
help mitigate the severity of bug 497164, such that people would only
need to go that route when they *really* need strict ordering of tasks.

-- 
Sub-tasks should be ordered and orderable
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/345575
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Status in Getting Things GNOME!: Confirmed

Bug description:
In the normal view, sub-tasks always appear in the order in which they have been created. Drag & dropping allows one to reorder the sub-tasks but it's not stored. If you regenerate the view (change a tag selection for example), the sub-tasks are again in their original order.

Note also that order of tasks in the work view is weird with sub-tasks of a given task sometimes separated by other tasks. I'm not sure what the right order should be.