None “YEAH!” reviews are a bit disappointing, but for better or worse they do get my attention And with luck the next version will be even better because of it. Though in this case it sounds like TaskPaper’s style just isn’t your style.

“Writeroom on the iPhone, but I was shocked to find all those show up in TaskPaper as well.”

I’m not sure what the best solution is… but it seemed silly for me to run to separate web servicies, that were exactly the same, just one for TaskPaper and one for WriteRoom. So I run one service, that both apps share. You can filter out the WriteRoom documents via the document tagging feature… just change so that you are only viewing documents tagged “TaskPaper”, and you shouldn’t see any WriteRoom documents again. Agreed first use experience might have been confusing, but the solution works fairly well I think. (of course still need to add document tag filtering to WriteRoom too… working on it).

“If you’ve created a task list on the iPhone it’s synced over as a ’.txt’ file instead of the ‘.taskpaper’ files that the desktop app creates. So you have to open it from within the desktop app (File » Open) where a double-click should have done the trick.”

Thanks, I’ve fixed this for the next release.

“Brandon also identifies problems with tag completion, deleting tasks (seeing strikeouts is an eyesore), lack of scheduling, disconnection between projects—all valid complaints”

Also Brandon says:

“Tagging requires typing an @ symbol followed by text every time unless you have TextExpander installed and can create snippets. It’s far easier to pull up a list of tags in Things and quickly tap on a bunch of tags.”

You can do something similar in TaskPaper, though faster I think. Just tap on the tasks that you wan to tag (while holding down on any of the bottom toolbar items for multiple selection). And then choose “Tag With…”. Tags are applied to all selected items. Creating new tags is harder, you need to type directly into the task, but in Things you need to add manually to task list. TaskPaper’s way is a bit more mysterious (need to know about multiple selection), but works just as fast and requires less UI.

“But there’s no delete. Meaning, if you cut something, but wanted to delete another item before pasting, you’d have to backspace through a whole line of text unless you wanted to lose the text you just cut.”

The alternaive is that you do a Delete in Things, and then can’t undo it. I went with Cut / Copy / Paste instead of delete because it seemed to be me that CUT was safter then delete since it’s undoable, and since it was nice to also have quick access to Copy / Paste. With that said ideally that popup should have a delete button (no iPhone API allows that yet), and the app should support undo of delete. At some point in the future I’m sure both those will be done, but in the meantime Cut / Copy / Paste intead of delete seemed like the right tradeoff.

I was looking at TaskPaper for my desktop and very much enjoyed the minimalistic and fast way of jotting down notes, a speed that just is not there with Things or some of the more ”advanced” GTD apps. But I really wanted the workflow of syncing with my iphone to be as smooth as possible, and as you mention, it isn’t.
So for now I’m gonna stick with what really seems to be the ideal solution for me:

Iphone: 2Do (much like Things, but prettier and cheaper and syncing is awesome.)
( http://www.2doapp.com/en/2Do/features.html ) Price: about 7$ (free version available)
Desktop input: FlexCal (todos, and events at the speed of a keyboard shortcut)
( http://flexgames.com/flexcal/ ) Price: Free
Desktop organizing: DoBeDo (widget, so you don’t clutter your desktop.)
( http://tinyurl.com/yc3e2xt ) Price: Free

Also you could always go use Anxiety ( http://www.anxietyapp.com/ Price: free) if you wanted you todos on the desktop.

Now here is the thing! ”3apps!? thats clutter if I ever saw it!” , well no not really.
Because the 3 works seamlessly and perfect together without getting in each other ways.
This means that you don’t really think of them as 3 applications, but as one workflow.
Obviously it would be cool at one point to get ONE app that did all this (at the same price
But it will take quite a bit to turn me away from this setup.

I would love to hear any alternative ideas for this setup?

// Alf