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A plain-text file format for todos and check lists

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Re: A plain-text file format for todos and check lists

#61

Post by tommyage »

rubenv wrote: post #56
tommyage wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> - doesn't support UTF-8 checkbox emoji That's a good thing. Its also unicode, not utf-8. Your plugin can display it with a unicode character. Having a simple ASCII char set helps portability _a lot_. No benefit in supporting unicode code points. > - doesn't support nested lists If you can tick all items within a nested list, why bother writing it with dedicated TODO items? Additionally, you can just create more fil…

Sticking to ASCII in this day and age is nice and fun if English is your mother tongue, but it's a big middle finger to the rest of the world. Please don't.

You are right, I didn't wanted to imply that these lists can only be used by speakers fluent in english. I wanted to imply that grammars of languages are best represented in ASCII.

There are languages written from right to left or top to bottom. No standard I know of are supporting such flexibility in syntax. And it shouldnt be necessary - if the items within the grammar support unicode but the keywords are ASCII only it can MORE easily adapted than supporting unicode....

Re: A plain-text file format for todos and check lists

#63

Post by spc476 »

jotaen wrote: post #15
pessimizer wrote: post #7

No way to create subitems i.e. when the subitems are completed, the parent item is completed? The main thing I need out of a task manager is for it to allow me to decompose and refine tasks, and to keep track of that stuff as it gets complicated. If the data format doesn't even allow for subtasks, that seems impossible without abusing tags. edit: I now see that it's the top issue on your bugtracker.

For reference, this is the discussion around subitems / nesting: https://github.com/jotaen/xit/discussions/2 As mentioned in that ticket, I’m still reluctant to add this to the [x]it! file specification. On the one hand it seems like an obvious and useful feature, but on the other hand it’s unfortunately pretty difficult to implement in tooling. For example, I tried to add experimental support for nested subitems in…

I came up with this format 10 years ago to document running our regression test. It was a complicated process (for reasons) and I had four major sections---one outlining items to do once, such as:

    [ ] Check you can log into Jenkins
    [ ] Check you have an account on lab1
    [ ] SSH into account on lab1
        [ ] "mkdir bin"
        [ ] "mkdir conf"
        [ ] "mkdir var"
        [ ] In shell configuration file, export following
            [ ] export FOOBAR=...
            [ ] export PATH=$PATH:$FOOBAR/bin:$FOOBAR/install
            [ ] export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$FOOBAR/lib64b:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH
        [ ] Ensure you can run "sudo -u root foo"
        [ ] Ensure you can run "sudo -u nobody bar"
    [ ] Check you have an account on lab 2
    [ ] SSH into account on lab2
        [ ] ...
A second section outlining the steps needed to prepare to run the regression test. The third section was actually running the regression test, and the final section about shutting down the regression test. This list was then checked into our repository and any new hires were given this check list to do (and update it for any steps not clear or not specified---such updates happened a few times).

When I came up with this system, I didn't know about ORG mode. Nor did I expect anyone to use a tool other than a text editor with this. Heck, a person could print this out and use a pen to mark items off the list.

Re: A plain-text file format for todos and check lists

#64

Post by miralize »

TaskTXT (https://tasktxt.com/) looks to be a really interesting product in this space

The creator made a few videos on the motivation & implementation of it. He goes into such great detail in crafting subtle almost unnoticable animations in the app.

- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZdBgVZn5NI - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JjKxpks13Zw

Re: A plain-text file format for todos and check lists

#65

Post by bitwrangler »

I like that specification. I've used something similar for many years. I code my task list into a text file using a single character to show status:

   . This is a pending/idle task item, and normal priority
   _ Task is pending/idle, and low priority (the "someday" tasks)
   ! This is a pending/idle task item, and high priority (fix today/soon)
   * Currently working on this item
   # Task was completed
   X Task was cancelled
   > Task is delayed/deferred, waiting until later time
   Z Task is sleeping, waiting for some dependency
I also tend to code year/month after the symbol like 2022/08 (not shown in the listed examples)

By keeping a single char in the first line, I can easily grep and sort tasks to make sense of things. I know it's very crude, but it works well for my purposes. I welcome any suggestions or improvements

(edit: formatting)

Re: A plain-text file format for todos and check lists

#66

Post by sowbug »

jotaen wrote: post #58
rubenv wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sticking to ASCII in this day and age is nice and fun if English is your mother tongue, but it's a big middle finger to the rest of the world. Please don't.

Per specification, [x]it! files must be UTF-8 encoded. (See https://github.com/jotaen/xit/blob/main/Specification.md#fil... ) You can use Unicode characters in item descriptions, so you can write these texts in Japanese, Finnish, or Greek. Only the “syntactical elements” (like checkboxes, priority, due dates) are made up from ASCII characters, to ensure that they are easy to type.

Perhaps the spec could allow an implementation to support a run-time option to recognize alternate characters for syntactic elements. This would have the downside that one person's data might not be shareable with another person's [x]it installation. But that's not necessarily a bug, especially to people who don't plan to share their todo lists.

This run-time-option-only approach would be much better than the "be liberal in what you accept and strict in what you emit" philosophy that tends to cause fragmentation on lots of different levels.

Re: A plain-text file format for todos and check lists

#70

Post by josephg »

sowbug wrote: post #66
jotaen wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Per specification, [x]it! files must be UTF-8 encoded. (See https://github.com/jotaen/xit/blob/main/Specification.md#fil... ) You can use Unicode characters in item descriptions, so you can write these texts in Japanese, Finnish, or Greek. Only the “syntactical elements” (like checkboxes, priority, due dates) are made up from ASCII characters, to ensure that they are easy to type.

Perhaps the spec could allow an implementation to support a run-time option to recognize alternate characters for syntactic elements. This would have the downside that one person's data might not be shareable with another person's [x]it installation. But that's not necessarily a bug, especially to people who don't plan to share their todo lists. This run-time-option-only approach would be much better than the "be lib…

> Perhaps the spec could allow an implementation to support a run-time option to recognize alternate characters for syntactic elements.

Please don't. The equivalent in programming languages would be localizing the syntactic elements ({}, (), [], '.', etc). Its much simpler for a language ecosystem to have the same syntax regardless of the programmer's language.

As far as I know, international keyboards can still type these characters just fine.

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