Comment 2 for bug 497164

@Jonathan: "see only the bottom-level tasks that are active" — have you never used the GTG work view?

I sometimes have order-dependent subtasks, but so far I have gotten by with:
* Setting dates, or
* Naming the tasks like "1: Buy the gift", "2: Pack the gift in a nice paper" so they sort in the right order.

These techniques can also *mix* with unordered tasks...for example I have one task with some ordered subtasks ("1: ...", "2: ...", "3: ...") and some other, unordered subtasks. I can also see if I have done things out of order ("1: ..." and "3: ..." remain = "2: ..." was done out of order). As techniques, users have to be taught to use them, but I think they are better than trying to make the task model anticipate all the possible ways people use tasks. Then the task model gets very complicated just to add incremental features.

One small change could help: automatically alter task titles to teach the user how to order things. Suppose we had four tasks (in alphabetical order):
* Bow
* Jump
* Sit down
* Stand up

But we wanted them in the order:
* Stand up
* Jump
* Bow
* Sit down

If I dragged "Stand Up" before "Bow", GTG could rename those "1: Stand Up" and "2: Bow" respectively to match my intended ordering:
* 1: Stand Up
* 2: Bow
* Jump
* Sit Down

Drag "2: Bow" after "Jump" (or the opposite):
* 1: Stand Up
* 2: Jump (renamed)
* 3: Bow (renamed)
* Sit Down

...after seeing GTG do this for them, even a new user would think, "Oh, right—I can use numbers to keep some of my tasks in order!"

There would have to be some decisions made about how this worked, e.g.:
(Bow, Jump, Sit down, Stand up) → drag "Sit down" to last → (1: Stand up, 2: Sit down, Bow, Jump)
OR
(Bow, Jump, Sit down, Stand up) → drag "Sit down" to last → (1: Bow, 2: Jump, 3: Stand Up, 4: Sit down)

...but I would like this approach.