Hi Julian,

I understand. Let me clarify my logic:
1. You gave a bunch of thoughts all having children, everything well ordered.
2. Then you have to link some of those ordered children (coming from different families/parents) to a jump thought (gate) because they all have a link with that thought but are not directly related.
3. The order that those thoughts are going to display on the jumpgate (left) is determined by the order they have to the different parents... which in this case makes no logic.

I added in this an example. I'm into judo teaching. I have a brain on judo that has a dictionary with words that are often used in judo grouped in families like actions/body parts/sizes... All my techniques have on the (left) jump side the connection to the explanations of the different words that make up the technique. In the example you have the technique Uchi-mata-sukashi which comprises 3 words but due to the child order that is alphabetical (as always is the case with dictionaries) in the dictionary part (without numbers) they come out alphabetically on the jump side... while uchi then mata then sukashi should be the order for that occasion. If I decide to give the dictionary child thoughts a number in order for them to come in the correct uchi-mata-sukashi logic this will mess up the alphabetical order in my dictionary part... and for another technique like o-uchi-gari the uchi should be in the second place, not the first... another unsolvable situation with the current ordering methods (a catch 22).

The only solution to this is to organise/order the incoming links and not (or only on the second level) the thoughts behind the links. This way you can reorder any "random" group of thoughts in any spot in your brain independently from the order logic to their parents through their links.

I realise that this would make us have two ordering methods:
1. Link-level
2. Thought-level
For me there is no logic to ordering the thoughts instead of the links, as you soon get into troubles like described before. But I realise that for backward compatibility issues dumping the thought ordering with .x (numbers) is a no can do.
So what I propose is that the link ordering exists next to the thought ordering, with priority on the link-level. If the link level isn't having any ordering then the thought order is to be applied. This solves all the ordering problems that can occur in the brain on all levels (I think).

Hope this explanation cleared all the questions you had. If you still have feel free and shoot...

Merry X-mass

Jean-Marc

Jean-Marc - I think you are saying something quite profound there, but I am lost with your jump gate analogy - are you saying this is a way to solve the issue, or that branches with links are even harder to organise?

Hi there, I support your point of view, but you don't even have to want to reorder anything with different numbers... Just refer to your perfectly ordered thoughts through the jump gate (coming from different parents) and then try to sort those jump thoughts... You end up in a catch 22! The only way to solve this problem is if you can also sort through the links! If you make that the prime sorting method and only in the absence of a sorted link system you take the sorting system of the thoughts, then you have a bulletproof sorting system. You can sort out thoughts like you do now and on any level (e.g. at the jump gate side) you can overrule the thought sorting method with sorted links!!!

Blimey - just been checking this and this request has been a high priority since 2008. Please can you do it?

My support email I sent yesterday follows:

I am now a long term user of TheBrain. I have one major frustration: I want to order my child links in manual order – not number or alphabetical or order of creation. And be able to reorder at will.

I know I can use numbers, but then if I want to change the order I have to renumber everything. Yes I can use numbers in 10s so a reorder is like changing 10 to 95, but this is still painful.

I find myself resorting to using XMInd as a tool for those times I need this and that ANNOYS me – as my Brain is supposed to be my single repository.

Is there a workaround I don’t; know about or a feature I am unaware of. If not is this a planned upgrade (please make no 1 priority).

This is the ONLY think that detracts from TheBrain usage – help PLEASE!!

Critical for me. Absolute priority. The only sorting method that would work on all levels (parents, children and jumps) and with or without multiple parents, is if the sorting is based upon the links! Then you can "manually" sort out anything in any place!

Best Regards,

Jean-Marc

Game changer.

Thanks Zenrain for getting this on the docket. Number1 critical feature addition in my view!

I've just added another suggested to one of the add manual sorting threads in the forum: https://forums.thebrain.com/post/request-to-add-manual-sorting-3437-12478410?pid=1340455447

Best

Jim

I think the current implementation of manual sorting has set the expectation on how it works when the thought is linked to multiple parents. So at a minimum, it would be nice to have a way to automatically adjust the manual sorting based on drag and drop (possibly by using the select window?).

Not sure if adjusting based on different parents is really necessary, so adding this to the comments for further discussion.