Please bring back user defined sort order in plex
I work with medical data that has its own structure which does not lend itself to the current sorting features. If the other features of the current release were not so compelling in other areas I'd be back to good old PB3 in a flash for that feature alone. I'm begging here! ;-}
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xhansx commented
I think this feature will only be usefull after http://thebrain.uservoice.com/forums/4597-thebrain/suggestions/70182-node-types-with-structured-meta-data-?ref=title has been made available and you would be able to sort on the user defined attributes. A reason to vote for that one!
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Paul Shapiro commented
Any progress on this much needed feature (which I would use a lot in PB outline view mode) ?
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Paul Shapiro commented
Any progress on this much needed feature (which I would use a lot in outline view) ?
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Paul Shapiro commented
I REALLY want/need this feature, also. I need it more than transparency in PB 6 beta. Please, please, please. I have commented on this before (in this thread). Brain Technologies, please listen to the people (or you are doomed - and I love your product). This feature is essential. Please also vote for my companion feature request: http://bit.ly/af9aAP (that may be a prelude to implementation of user-defined sort order, and may add enough functionality for some users).
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Cornan commented
responding to Ryan's comment of 15 days ago: you can get at least one level of sorting by using "Arrange .. by Type" with thought types (and Super Types). My most important case is to "sort" / group thoughts with further child thoughts, analagous to folders, to the left, leaving "end point" children to the right. This then leads me to create two or more thought types with identical names (so that the thought names of my "folder" thoughts will be able to sort with a group of "folder" types with different icons, etc.)
This in turn led me to discover that the selection UI for thought types doesn't work consistently with thought types that have identical names (but what other choice do I have?)
Personally I favor more sort options metadata on thoughts and thought types, including some type of sorting / grouping key, and more sorting options (sort by date, sort by thought sort key, etc.)
Returning to this specific request, I can see how custom sorting would mean that a thought with more than one parent would need more than one set of sort keys (one set per parent), but one of my greatest frustrations is when vendors remove features. In the case of PersonalBrain, removing jump links to virtual thoughts annoyed me the most so far (!)
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Ryan Bartlett commented
It has taken me a few months to realize it, but the inability to sort children is a big roadblock. You either have to put a 2 digit number in front of your notes or enter your children in the precise order (forget about it). The issue is even more troublesome when you paste outline or import from another program like Freemind. I'm going to keep plugging away in the hopes this will be fixed soon -- if I didn't think they'd fix it, I'd probably start looking elsewhere.
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Middleway commented
Thought I'd stop back to see if there has been any progress or announcement of intentions for this request. Bummer to see it languishing. I've given up on PB due to the loss of this feature. What a shame.
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cwobob commented
I developed several lesson plans for a class at a local college. Another colleague was excited to see the results, but commented about having to put a number or letter in the thought in order to have the outline sequence as it was written. The lack of this one feature has prevented the University from adopting PB as a staple piece of software, otherwise it has rave reviews. i feel the same way. I love it, but without this level of control for the author, I will not develop any further PBs for use in the classroom.
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Cornan commented
In that this request involves sort orders that work "by thought" rather than globally, it is related to my request to apply the existing options by thought (http://thebrain.uservoice.com/pages/4597-personalbrain/suggestions/94462-custom-sort-order-for-active-thought-in-normal-view).
In the meantime, my most important use case in normal mode is to group child thoughts that are "nodes" (thoughts with children) from thoughts that are "content thoughts", much as file explorer programs show folders and files separately.
My work-around for this was to create a set of thought types with both a "node" Super Type (for color and default icon) and names that begin with "(ST node)" for sorting.
Of course this means that I select "Arrange By Type", which groups all of the thoughts with an "(ST node)" thought to the left in Normal view, while the thoughts that don't begin with "(" are shown to the right.
As noted by other comments, work-arounds have their own disadvantages and improvements are in order.
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peterm commented
I'm curious: Is drag and drop ordering of thoughts ever going to be added to Personal Brain? More than a year has passed without this feature being implemented. For me, it is so crucial that I have decided to abandon PB until this feature is back.
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Shi Maike commented
Well I use the thought types to order my thoughts as I wish - true now I have quite a few types there, but it's still clear and my thoughts are ordered logically. I just put a number in front of the type name according to the priority of this type of thoughts. The type ordering is the closest to the user ordering. Because it's ordered alphabetically and the name of thought types is not necessarily displayed (The label is displayed instead).
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Paul Shapiro commented
I agree that user-defined sort and resort order be enabled for individual parent thoughts. Several other things are needed for the sort order of child thoughts: 1) For pre-designed sort orders (Name, Modified Date, Entry Date etc) there must be a toggle on each sort criteria to reverse the order (ascending <--> descending). 2) Allow contol over sort order (of child thoughts) for each individual parent thought, either pre-designed (of course, BI-DIRECTIONAL) sort (such as Name, Modified Date etc) or custom, user-defined by drag-and-drop.
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richsales commented
At present it is alpha A-Z or if you include prefix numbers then effectively numeric sorted. Can we have a 'child sort' mode controlled by a 'child property: mark number'. That way the thoughts can be in a user order of preference or priority, without having to show number prefixes.
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John Pemberton-Bates commented
Please can you enable this capability at two levels. Default for the whole brain, then let individual thoughts have specific sort/order criteria (including user defined, numeric, text, date, user date etc.
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pmurillo commented
It is amazing and disappointing at the same time to see than a product as complex and advanced as Personal Brain is still lacks such an important and basic feature.
I need to be able to sort thoughts in my own custom way, as any other Mind Mapping software. Otherwise, I can extract only about 50% of the software potential.
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marcustiberius commented
Also, WHEN you fix this :), it would be nice if you could select other sort by options...say, sort by type, and have it sort by type, then by user defined order. IOW, it would be like MS Outlook is now...you can sort tasks by priority, and then you can still drag them to rearrange the order as you are reordering amoung tasks with the same priority. But if you try to drag a Normal Priority task to a higher order than a High Priority task, it pops right back to where it came from.
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marcustiberius commented
Personal Brain USED to have this capability and then lost it?!?! I'll trust that there are good technical programming reasons that I don't understand for it, but do what it takes to get it back! This is a key functionality that is absolutely vital if you want to use Personal Brain for to-do list/task management, among other things, and it is one of the main reasons why despite getting Personal Brain Pro 4 over a year ago, I only recently started getting really into using it as my one all-purpose info organizer. (I now use sorting by thought types to sort tasks by priority, which is ok, but still it's a somewhat combersome workaround for a capability that I should be a given.)
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flexibull commented
PB is *almost* my dream writing/plotting tool. I have child plot-points per character that I need to put into order in a larger story plot, but there is no mechanism to either (1) order the plot thoughts per character thought, or (2) take those plot thoughts and insert them into an ordered story thought. Until then, my paper notebook and flash cards are my best buddies.
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pmurillo commented
Being able to see thoughts arranged by my own criteria is critical for me. I desperately need this feature.
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Middleway commented
continued: I'm frustrated that I have to add an extra step in my data entry to have the display that I prefer. It's a pain. I'm about to give up on PB and have stopped recommending it. It's a shame because the other improvements are great. I'm tired of constantly having to jockey thoughts to keep my orders as I add new data.