15 ms·

A plain-text file format for todos and check lists

207 points by quyleanh 4y ago

valbaca 4y ago
Obsidian has this built-in. [ ] turns into a checkbox and supports sub-tasks/lists
- SamBam 4y ago
  Close, I think it has to be in a list , so requires `- [ ]`, which always trips me up because I forget.
eurasiantiger 4y ago
This is great. I just wonder whether it could be a superset of Markdown.
- jotaen 4y ago
  Creator here. [x]it! was deliberately designed as a strict data format that stands on its own, as I think this makes it easier to create tooling and work with the data programmatically. However, I think use-cases and preferences are as different as the people who use them, so [x]it! doesn’t aim to be the one-size-fits-all approach. For reference, there was also some discussion about this topic going on here https://github.com/jotaen/xit/discussions/10 https://github.com/jotaen/xit/discussions/10.
oezi 4y ago
I am almost using this format for my markdown todo app written in Ruby: https://github.com/coezbek/rodo https://github.com/coezbek/rodo Differences: I use unicode symbols such as ⌛ or for paused or priority items. I use dash for obsolete/canceled items. I find this more in line with bullet journal which inspired the development of Rodo. I do use markdown bullet lists because I like to indent and order stuff. Rodo is organized primarily around showing the todos of a day (mostly today) and provides the tools to postpone or carry-over todays to another day.
- jotaen 4y ago
  rodo looks quite cool! It’s interesting to see how common the syntax is with these formats, so there seem to be “natural” patterns. [x]it! doesn’t try to be opinionated about what you use it for. So you could use it for your daily todos, but you could also use it for writing a packing list, or maintaining a wish list with potential shopping items. It’s intended to be a generic file format, and more specific use-cases could be supported through (independent) tooling.
pydry 4y ago
Why use this over orgmode?
- habnds 4y ago
  do you use orgmode outside of emacs? I tried a port to vscode once and it was not usable.
  - flakeoil 4y ago
    I like EasyOrg as you do not need to use Emacs. It also has a useful agenda. [1] https://www.easyorgmode.com https://www.easyorgmode.com
  - alexott 4y ago
    I use beorg on iOS, and orgzly on android
  - pydry 4y ago
    I never use it with emacs. Only other text editors and orgzly. It's a fine standard.
  - dxhdr 4y ago
    > do you use orgmode outside of emacs? Outside... of emacs? You leave emacs?
  - xenodium 4y ago
    Org is becoming more accessible outside of Emacs. A handful of us are working on it. I built two apps for iOS: https://flathabits.com https://flathabits.com https://plainorg.com https://plainorg.com There are other org-based tools out there. https://BrainTool.org https://BrainTool.org https://logseq.com https://logseq.com https://orgzly.com https://orgzly.com https://beorg.app https://beorg.app https://easyorgmode.com https://easyorgmode.com https://organice.200ok.ch https://organice.200ok.ch https://orgro.org https://orgro.org
jjice 4y ago
I like this a bunch. I've used `-` to represent at task that isn't done and `+` to represent a task that is done, optionally with a time estimate in front of them. I might switch over to this since it's just a bit more descriptive and defined.
- ledgerdev 4y ago
  I do exactly the same, and also use a tilda for tasks in progress, and 2 periods for those that are blocked. Sometimes simpler is better.
pessimizer 4y ago
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.
- jotaen 4y ago
  For reference, this is the discussion around subitems / nesting: https://github.com/jotaen/xit/discussions/2 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 the Sublime Text plugin, but I eventually had to give up, just because the syntax highlighting engine is so limited in regards to recursion. It’s the same – or much worse – for other editors. At the end of the day, I feel that it doesn’t help to add such a feature to the file format, if tools then cannot deal with it properly. Right now, the spec is so simple that it can be implemented in maybe a day or so. I see a great deal of value in keeping the hurdle for tool creators small. But it’s a pretty tricky balancing act in the end.
  - pessimizer 4y ago
    > There can be conflicting state, for example: what happens if the parent item is checked, but the children are still open? Or the other way around? If all children are checked, shouldn’t that “automatically” resolve the parent? What if the parent has a closer due date than the children? And so on. While decision could be made for any of these corner cases, it might still feel strange in practice. To me, the convention to go with seems easy. 1) If the parent is explicitly checked, leave the children as they are, and ask the user through tooling if they want to check each unchecked subtask, delete it, or move it up a level. 2) If all of the children are checked, the parent stays unchecked, but tooling should ask the user if the parent is complete, or if another subtask should be added. 3) If the parent has a closer due date than the children, don't do anything unless you feel like warning the user i.e. hold the subtasks to their due dates, and hold the parent task to its due date. The issue about descriptions I see as a non-issue: dictate that descriptions marry to the task above them. It would be nicer to be freer with mixing descriptions and tasks, but you'd have to introduce more tokens. One thing in the thread that I don't find necessary is marking partial completion. I don't have any experience with Sublime, but this seems like a very basic tree. When reading the subtasks, all you have to hold is the stack of the checkbox states and due dates of higher task levels for tooling to answer any of the above questions. A tool could seek backwards in order to check a parent if the children were checked, the user was warned, and the user said they wanted the parent checked. But if instead you really only wanted to read a line at a time, you could add a dummy item called "[ ] Complete parent task" at the end of the subtask list in order to keep an unchecked parent with checked children consistent. The problem for me is that a tree is what I have trouble organizing. If it's just a linear list of things, I'm not sure how useful it could be for me other than by setting alarms that I could set directly. There is never a time when one of my tasks isn't to break down another task into simpler steps; all but the simplest tasks I have really have "break this down" that as the default first subtask. So one workflow datapoint for useful with subtasks, useless without subtasks.
bachmeier 4y ago
Discussion from a few months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30879327 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30879327
ozim 4y ago
I am just getting more and more convinced that any personal todo list is useless. Most useless part is priorities on personal list. If something like utility invoice is to be paid - just do it. If it is something like "read Anna Karenina" it is not getting any priority ever it is just something I would like to do in my life. So stuff that really needs to be done I will deal with without any todo list I will just remember it or deal with it right away. Stuff that does not need to be done will not get done - and that is perfectly fine. Different thing is if it is company "todo" list and I need to keep customer requests, well JIRA does the job. In the end don't listen to me because there are many much more successful people than me, I am simply happy with what I achieved so far, maybe I would achieve more with todo lists but somehow I fail to see how these would help me in living my life.
- kstrauser 4y ago
  My problem is that I'll never remember to do those things on my own. I have repeating items for things that seem obvious but that life experience has demonstrated that I just can't track on my own. I wish I could remember to order flowers for my wife in time for them to be delivered before our anniversary, but I won't. A todo app for me is a lifesaver: instead of being all stressed out that I'm forgetting something important, I can get all that stuff out of my head and concentrate on other things.
  - sixstringtheory 4y ago
    Isn't a repeating calendar event with an alert a better tool for this? But then you have to remember to check your calendar or to do the thing that alert you just snoozed/ignored was reminding you to do. Don't forget to check your todo list from time to time... I have the same problem as you, of remembering things I need to do. But I've not found todo lists to actually help, in fact I find if I take too much time to maintain the list, I have less time to spend doing the things I'm supposed to do. Kind of like remembering phone numbers. I don't know anyone's phone number anymore, because I don't have to, because I have a place that I can store them all. The difference is that the phone dials it for me when I tap it; my todo list doesn't carry out the tasks I write on it, but it does help me to forget them faster! It's some mixture of https://xkcd.com/1906/ https://xkcd.com/1906/, https://xkcd.com/927/ https://xkcd.com/927/ and https://xkcd.com/1319/ https://xkcd.com/1319/
kstrauser 4y ago
How does this compare with TaskPaper, like https://guide.taskpaper.com/getting-started/ https://guide.taskpaper.com/getting-started/? TaskPaper is sophisticated enough that OmniFocus can use it as a serialization format.
- jotaen 4y ago
  I’ve never used TaskPaper, but the capabilities of the data format look somewhat similar. I think the difference is primarily a philosophical one: [x]it! is a file format with a formal specification that’s open source.[1] There is no “canonical” tool for it, the idea is rather that tools can be created separately. That should give users the freedom to work with their data independent of specific tools. [1] https://github.com/jotaen/xit/blob/main/Specification.md https://github.com/jotaen/xit/blob/main/Specification.md
  - kstrauser 4y ago
    That's fair. I could've sworn that TaskPaper was an actual spec, but when looking just now I couldn't find it.
    - jotaen 4y ago
      The maintainer wrote something about this here: https://support.hogbaysoftware.com/t/where-is-taskpapers-file-format-defined/2098 https://support.hogbaysoftware.com/t/where-is-taskpapers-fil...
      - kstrauser 4y ago
        I saw that, and neither of those repos have been updated in the last 6 years. (Maybe they're still up to date? I have no idea.)
jxi 4y ago
I’ll give this a shot since he went through the trouble of creating a vscode extension for it.
falcolas 4y ago
For a standalone CLI, I still prefer https://github.com/todotxt/todo.txt-cli https://github.com/todotxt/todo.txt-cli - probably because there are Android and iOS clients for it, and it's based around a bash script. For vim, I just use vim-wiki, which is a superset of this functionality. Of course, looking through this thread, there's lots of different options. Which is cool.
0xbadcafebee 4y ago
I like it. Few issues: - doesn't describe handling spaces or other characters before the checkbox - doesn't support UTF-8 checkbox emoji - doesn't support nested lists - specifies a specific space character when a character class would be better - not clear what "item must not contain blank lines" means - description indentation limit of four space characters is a problem for nested items - description supporting blank lines (properly indented) would be useful for longer descriptions - date should support an ISO or other standard date format - timezone is necessary for events happening in specific timezones or across timezones
- lifehasleft 4y ago
  Some of your comments are described in the extended syntax specifications[0]. [0]: https://xit.jotaen.net/syntax-guide https://xit.jotaen.net/syntax-guide
- jotaen 4y ago
  Thanks for sharing your notes. Nesting of items is not supported, although the idea has come up. It’s on hold right now – that’s mostly due to practical reasons, because it’s relatively hard to implement in tooling. Allow me to clarify a few details regarding the spec: - There can’t be any character before the checkbox. (An item “MUST start at the beginning of a line with a checkbox.”) - A blank line is defined as “a line that is either empty, or that exclusively consists of blank characters”, and a blank character is defined as “a character from the Unicode Space Separator category (Zs)”. So the description text of an item (that can span multiple lines) cannot contain a line that’s all blank. Reason is that a blank or empty line separates item groups from each other, so allowing it to appear within descriptions could create visual ambiguity. (Even though it wouldn’t be ambiguous from a purely formal standpoint.) - The format for dates is a subset of ISO-8601, except for the slashed variant (2020/12/31) that’s there for convenience, and the notation for quarters (2022-Q1).
  - 0xbadcafebee 4y ago
    It would be simpler to just use the ISO date format. Otherwise people have to implement their own date parser for your stricter format, which adds code (and therefore bugs) and increases probability that people will incorrectly implement the spec. Why wouldn't you allow space before the checkbox? If somebody accidentally has a space because it's not obvious in their editor (esp. if items can be separated by two newlines) what happens? Undefined behavior? Your format looks a lot like Markdown so I wouldn't have assumed this was a spec requirement unless I looked closely (most people don't look at specs closely)
bobbyd2323 4y ago
I just use a big text file where I keep all notes and todos (do use a [] as well), separate dates in a structured way with most recent date at top. Typically edit it in emacs. It just keeps getting bigger and bigger, but it’s nice to have a single text file that I can search.
foobarbecue 4y ago
Taskwarrior uses a pain text format and is excellent. It's my daily driver todo list. https://taskwarrior.org https://taskwarrior.org
- shagie 4y ago
  An online site that does task warrior sync - https://inthe.am https://inthe.am
NoboruWataya 4y ago
I like the simplicity of it. Sorry if I've missed it but are there already good tools built around this?
- jotaen 4y ago
  There currently are a bunch of editor plugins and one CLI tool. You find a collection of tools (all third-party) linked from the project website: https://xit.jotaen.net https://xit.jotaen.net
NonNefarious 4y ago
miralize 4y ago
TaskTXT (https://tasktxt.com/ 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=kZdBgVZn5NI - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JjKxpks13Zw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JjKxpks13Zw
bitwrangler 4y ago
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)
- gofreddygo 4y ago
  > grep and sort tasks to make sense of things This. grep + sort + awk = unbelievable single person task management effectiveness. And it was right under my nose all the while. I've dumbed my version even further, I just use numbers. every line starting with 1 is highest Priority and so on. another important piece i needed was a pointer to where i last left off. I just use double underscores "__". next time just open and search for 2 underscores and start right off. Works everywhere.
  - 082349872349872 4y ago
    Doug McIlroy recounts how early use of egrep for personal calendars led to Al Aho improving its algorithm: https://minnie.tuhs.org/pipermail/tuhs/2022-August/026336.html https://minnie.tuhs.org/pipermail/tuhs/2022-August/026336.ht...
  - gofreddygo 4y ago
    Side note: for weekly personal todos and tasks, I have not found a better way than a whiteboard or a piece of paper stuck on the wall. Paper on the wall is better in many ways (e.g. easy to rip off when guests are coming over, folds into the pocket to take it with you for shopping, scan it, etc) I use plain text files for longer term tasks and todos. One file per project.
freebit50 4y ago
I came up a personal solution to Kanban's in a text file years ago. It's pretty simple in concept and easy to type. Here it is: - means not started. * is in progress. + is complete.
- Stan42 4y ago
  I see Kanban, I upvote ! Thanks for moving the challenge forward. May I share with you one of our articles that talks about it, hope it helps :) https://zenkit.com/en/blog/kanban-explained-what-youve-always-wanted-to-know/ https://zenkit.com/en/blog/kanban-explained-what-youve-alway...
- ralferoo 4y ago
  I shifted from text-files for todo lists to using an adapted Bullet Journal 3 or 4 years back. Some times I neglect it for a few weeks at a time, but I've found it really useful on the times when I have used it extensively. In many ways, the todo section has similarities to Kanban. But anyway, one convention I picked up from there is: - for a comment - something to remind yourself of the context or information to remember . for a task you want to do date . for a task that needs to be done on/by a certain date / for a task that is started X for a completed task > for a task that moved to a later page It's a great system especially as transition from one state to another is just the addition of a line so very easy to do with pen and paper. Also, the act of transferring uncompleted tasks to a new page every week/month depending on preference makes it a great time to assess if things on the todo list are still worth doing as well as giving you a gentle reminder to get on and do them if they are.
taude 4y ago
Reminds me a bit of the Sublime Plugin PlainTasks that I used 10 years ago, or so [1] [2] [1] https://github.com/aziz/PlainTasks https://github.com/aziz/PlainTasks [2] https://www.linux-magazine.com/Online/Blogs/Productivity-Sauce/Turn-Sublime-Text-into-a-Task-Manager-with-the-PlainTasks-Plugin https://www.linux-magazine.com/Online/Blogs/Productivity-Sau...
jbverschoor 4y ago
I can only recommend NotePlan instead
tambourine_man 4y ago
I like it and have used a similar homegrown solution for years. I’d love to switch to a better supported one, but please: work in progress is obviously […] Not ... but the actual … character which takes the same horizontal space as X on monospaced fonts. Maybe use it as a second option? Nice work, thanks for sharing.
- nvllsvm 4y ago
  That character is not directly on keyboards, so it requires additional, OS-specific knowledge to type it.
  - tambourine_man 4y ago
    I don’t know. That’s a very common character.
- jotaen 4y ago
  Thanks for your feedback. I think for the status characters there are a lot of imaginable variations and preferences. In the end, I thought that restricting the spec to a single character per status would help to confine the overall complexity of the file format, so it’s a bit of a tradeoff.
upen946 4y ago
Nice. Supports emoji's? Looks like the UTF-8 is not yet supported directly.
- jotaen 4y ago
  [x]it! files are UTF-8 encoded by default. The predefined syntactical elements (such as checkboxes, priorities, or due dates) are composed from ASCII characters, but outside of that (e.g. in item descriptions) you can use all available Unicode characters without restriction.
mjh2539 4y ago
Just use org-mode.
- nvllsvm 4y ago
  How's vim/neovim compatibilty these days? Org-mode is appealing, but vim/neovim support wasn't great last time I checked.
  - mjh2539 4y ago
    I can't say. I use emacs.
chrismorgan 4y ago
> Letter: a character from the Unicode Letter category (L) This definition is insufficient for many scripts, such as Indic scripts. My name “Chris” is written in Telugu as “క్రిస్”: letter ka, sign virama (which suppresses the inherent vowel, and also joins the next letter and vowel sign as a conjunct in this instance, as part of the same syllable—if you didn’t want that, you’d insert a ZERO-WIDTH NON-JOINER and get క్ రి [minus the space, HN turned by ZWNJ into a space :/] instead of క్రి), letter ra, vowel sign i, letter sa, sign virama (which this time just suppresses the inherent vowel). Six code points, of which three are Other_Letter (part of Letter) and three Nonspacing_Mark (part of Mark, not Letter). Unicode’s Letter general category is almost never what you want. To begin with, you should instead use the “Alphabetic” property, which examination of https://www.unicode.org/reports/tr44/#Alphabetic https://www.unicode.org/reports/tr44/#Alphabetic and https://www.unicode.org/reports/tr44/#GC_Values_Table https://www.unicode.org/reports/tr44/#GC_Values_Table shows to be a superset of Letter, adding the Letter_Number (Nl) general category and the Other_Lowercase, Other_Uppercase and Other_Alphabetic properties. But actually, even Alphabetic isn’t quite the right tool: some scripts don’t separate words with non-alphabetical characters, and some scripts use non-alphabetical characters in the middle of words (e.g. ZWJ and ZWNJ in Indic texts, or apostrophes in English). For most correct results, I believe you actually need to get into full text segmentation to find word breaks, as defined in UAX #29 <https://www.unicode.org/reports/tr29/ https://www.unicode.org/reports/tr29/>. As usual: language is fiendishly complicated. The other definitions are a strange mixture. Digit is ASCII-only, which makes sense for due date, but is inconsistent with Unicode letters elsewhere. > The tag name MUST only contain letters, digits, or the characters _ or -. It MUST be treated as case-insensitive. This is somewhat poorly defined, and I’m confident that from such a definition you’ll get multiple incompatible implementations. I would say that you probably want to specify something based on Unicode’s caseless matching; see https://www.unicode.org/versions/Unicode14.0.0/ch05.pdf#G21790 https://www.unicode.org/versions/Unicode14.0.0/ch05.pdf#G217... which will give you much to read and despair of ever understanding. (The whole two and a bit pages of that subsection are worth reading. And I wouldn’t complain if you decided it was worth reading a lot more of the Unicode spec.) But in this place, I don’t think you actually want letters/digits/_/- anyway. I think that for tag names you’d do better with using UAX #31 <https://www.unicode.org/reports/tr31/ https://www.unicode.org/reports/tr31/> identifiers of some form. Note its optional medial characters (how you’d add -), its “hashtag identifiers”, and its remarks on case folding.
abhaysrivastav 4y ago
This is very cool. Only if i could pin my todolist on desktop.
qudat 4y ago
Very cool. For those that want to blog their lists, https://lists.sh https://lists.sh has been a lot of fun. https://erock.lists.sh/knowledge-management-apps https://erock.lists.sh/knowledge-management-apps
hboon 4y ago
I have been abusing a convoluted version of Markdown for this: ::ProjectA --- @@@Things to do @@@Sub-tasks @@Things to do, but not right away * Things done ::ProjectB --- @@@Another thing Easy to search for things like: "@@@" for the current TODO (and also show it in the menu bar with SwiftBar) "::ProjectName" to look for projects "* " to keep in a date-stamped file. I have kept such files since 2009. gist that preserves formatting: https://gist.github.com/hboon/2684da05fe6c5d7afbcbaa4d847824ac https://gist.github.com/hboon/2684da05fe6c5d7afbcbaa4d847824...
goplayoutside 4y ago
Obligatory xkcd: https://xkcd.com/927/ https://xkcd.com/927/ Seriously though, this looks great.
kidsil 4y ago
Why not Orgmode? I've been using it on multiple devices without any problems. I still occasionally edit it as text (when I'm on a machine without Emacs/Orgzly).
- Last5Digits 4y ago
  Have you found a good way to use org-mode on your phone? I remember trying to find a suitable app for weeks, but without any success. Even simple things, like following links into other files, were not possible. Edit: Ah, I missed you mentioning Orgzly. Last time I used it, I had a lot of trouble with syncing due to its way of storing files in a notebook. Everytime I deleted a file on any other device, Orgzly would just recreate the file and sync it back to all other devices. And when I tried it, it didn't support links to org-IDs.
  - dumpsterlid 4y ago
    I like orgzly but in my opinion orgro is even better. I think a critical point of usability with mobile has been met with org mode.
  - kidsil 4y ago
    Orgzly with Syncthing has been my setup for years.
  - liyuankui 4y ago
    Must mention Logseq. Logseq support org-mode as first class format. https://trello.com/c/z651hP7v/1116-org-mode-support https://trello.com/c/z651hP7v/1116-org-mode-support I don't think Logseq has realized how this feature can win popularity, since you can't find anything on org-mode in their website. (Always markdown, LOL)
- dumpsterlid 4y ago
  Honestly people wanting to make a hobby project from scratch and then brag about it in a blog post to make themselves look like a more savy programmer/techie (hey, not blaming people, when it is done well it is way better than a resume with bullet points) is primarily the reason they dont use org mode. It is like wondering why people go through massive amounts of efforts to bake stuff from scratch when there is a super market and bakery down the street, except it is also like I said a resume. If you want a plain text organizational, compositional and scheduling tool that you can use for the rest of your life and know that 30 years down the line it will be actively supported, developed and you will be able to tweak anything you want.... emacs/org mode is by far and away the best choice. It isn't even remotely close, we are talking about the difference between a planet and a tiny asteroid when you compare org mode to other plain textish organizational, compositional and scheduling tools. For as long as humanity doesn't collapse and probably even after it does org mode and emacs will be used (there is going to be some nerd somewhere using org mode and ledger cli to meticulously track how many smoked rats and cockroach kebobs they have left to eat before they have to leave their bunker), there is just such an intense critical mass of utility under an open source license. About the only bad thing with org mode at this point is it has such a vast nexus of interconnected capability it is difficult to even describe what exactly it is anymore lol. Like how would you even adequately describe org mode in a single sentence? It would have to be a Thomas Pynchon style sentence lol.
Kalanos 4y ago
In my experience, your titles need to be more visually distinct for when lists get long `====== MORNING ERRANDS ======` Is it good at indented text wrapping?
- jotaen 4y ago
  You’d be free to format your titles like that, if you prefer. The only restriction for titles is that the line cannot start with whitespace or `[`. Not sure what you mean by the text wrapping bit, but I think that appropriate/pleasant text wrapping would be a concern of an editor.
parski 4y ago
Why pad priority with dots? Why pad priority at all? The date format will allow bad clients to do the American yyyy-dd-mm thing, using a standard would make it unambiguous.
- imomochi 4y ago
  > Why pad priority with dots? Why pad priority at all? It's optional, so I'd assume it's for people who want to start the sentence from same aligned column. > The date format will allow bad clients to do the American yyyy-dd-mm thing, using a standard would make it unambiguous. Isn't 2022-08-23 the standard format; ISO 8601?
  - jotaen 4y ago
    > It's optional, so I'd assume it's for people who want to start the sentence from same aligned column. Yes, visual alignment is the first purpose; the other is if you want to sort your lines lexically (as described elsewhere in this discussion), then the dots enable deterministic ordering, because exclamation marks sort before dots. > The date format will allow bad clients to do the American yyyy-dd-mm thing, using a standard would make it unambiguous. The format for dates is a subset of ISO-8601, except for the slashed variant (2020/12/31) that’s there for convenience, and the notation for quarters (2022-Q1).
ChrisArchitect 4y ago
More discussion just 5 months ago shared by the author https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30879327 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30879327
tpoacher 4y ago
I use a mostly identical system, except instead of lines in a textfile, I use files in a folder, where the status is denoted by the extention. If you also assign specific icons per extension, which you can do e.g in Total commander, you have a nice icon-coded todo list. Using files instead of lines has several advantages. E.g. you can add notes in an item. Copy paste/link across projects etc. Search items vs in-text. Use dotfiles or ignore-patterns to hide/unhide items, associate certain tasks with specific apps (e.g. calendar) ... etc etc. Have been using this for more than a decade, works great.
metaketa 4y ago
This should be integrated into Markwhen.com

207 points by quyleanh 4y ago

valbaca 4y ago

Obsidian has this built-in. [ ] turns into a checkbox and supports sub-tasks/lists

SamBam 4y ago
Close, I think it has to be in a list , so requires `- [ ]`, which always trips me up because I forget.

eurasiantiger 4y ago

This is great. I just wonder whether it could be a superset of Markdown.

jotaen 4y ago
Creator here. [x]it! was deliberately designed as a strict data format that stands on its own, as I think this makes it easier to create tooling and work with the data programmatically. However, I think use-cases and preferences are as different as the people who use them, so [x]it! doesn’t aim to be the one-size-fits-all approach. For reference, there was also some discussion about this topic going on here https://github.com/jotaen/xit/discussions/10 https://github.com/jotaen/xit/discussions/10.

oezi 4y ago

I am almost using this format for my markdown todo app written in Ruby: https://github.com/coezbek/rodo https://github.com/coezbek/rodo Differences: I use unicode symbols such as ⌛ or for paused or priority items. I use dash for obsolete/canceled items. I find this more in line with bullet journal which inspired the development of Rodo. I do use markdown bullet lists because I like to indent and order stuff. Rodo is organized primarily around showing the todos of a day (mostly today) and provides the tools to postpone or carry-over todays to another day.

jotaen 4y ago
rodo looks quite cool! It’s interesting to see how common the syntax is with these formats, so there seem to be “natural” patterns. [x]it! doesn’t try to be opinionated about what you use it for. So you could use it for your daily todos, but you could also use it for writing a packing list, or maintaining a wish list with potential shopping items. It’s intended to be a generic file format, and more specific use-cases could be supported through (independent) tooling.

pydry 4y ago

Why use this over orgmode?

habnds 4y ago
do you use orgmode outside of emacs? I tried a port to vscode once and it was not usable.
- flakeoil 4y ago
  I like EasyOrg as you do not need to use Emacs. It also has a useful agenda. [1] https://www.easyorgmode.com https://www.easyorgmode.com
- alexott 4y ago
  I use beorg on iOS, and orgzly on android
- pydry 4y ago
  I never use it with emacs. Only other text editors and orgzly. It's a fine standard.
- dxhdr 4y ago
  > do you use orgmode outside of emacs? Outside... of emacs? You leave emacs?
- xenodium 4y ago
  Org is becoming more accessible outside of Emacs. A handful of us are working on it. I built two apps for iOS: https://flathabits.com https://flathabits.com https://plainorg.com https://plainorg.com There are other org-based tools out there. https://BrainTool.org https://BrainTool.org https://logseq.com https://logseq.com https://orgzly.com https://orgzly.com https://beorg.app https://beorg.app https://easyorgmode.com https://easyorgmode.com https://organice.200ok.ch https://organice.200ok.ch https://orgro.org https://orgro.org

jjice 4y ago

I like this a bunch. I've used `-` to represent at task that isn't done and `+` to represent a task that is done, optionally with a time estimate in front of them. I might switch over to this since it's just a bit more descriptive and defined.

ledgerdev 4y ago
I do exactly the same, and also use a tilda for tasks in progress, and 2 periods for those that are blocked. Sometimes simpler is better.

pessimizer 4y ago

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.

jotaen 4y ago
For reference, this is the discussion around subitems / nesting: https://github.com/jotaen/xit/discussions/2 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 the Sublime Text plugin, but I eventually had to give up, just because the syntax highlighting engine is so limited in regards to recursion. It’s the same – or much worse – for other editors. At the end of the day, I feel that it doesn’t help to add such a feature to the file format, if tools then cannot deal with it properly. Right now, the spec is so simple that it can be implemented in maybe a day or so. I see a great deal of value in keeping the hurdle for tool creators small. But it’s a pretty tricky balancing act in the end.
- pessimizer 4y ago
  > There can be conflicting state, for example: what happens if the parent item is checked, but the children are still open? Or the other way around? If all children are checked, shouldn’t that “automatically” resolve the parent? What if the parent has a closer due date than the children? And so on. While decision could be made for any of these corner cases, it might still feel strange in practice. To me, the convention to go with seems easy. 1) If the parent is explicitly checked, leave the children as they are, and ask the user through tooling if they want to check each unchecked subtask, delete it, or move it up a level. 2) If all of the children are checked, the parent stays unchecked, but tooling should ask the user if the parent is complete, or if another subtask should be added. 3) If the parent has a closer due date than the children, don't do anything unless you feel like warning the user i.e. hold the subtasks to their due dates, and hold the parent task to its due date. The issue about descriptions I see as a non-issue: dictate that descriptions marry to the task above them. It would be nicer to be freer with mixing descriptions and tasks, but you'd have to introduce more tokens. One thing in the thread that I don't find necessary is marking partial completion. I don't have any experience with Sublime, but this seems like a very basic tree. When reading the subtasks, all you have to hold is the stack of the checkbox states and due dates of higher task levels for tooling to answer any of the above questions. A tool could seek backwards in order to check a parent if the children were checked, the user was warned, and the user said they wanted the parent checked. But if instead you really only wanted to read a line at a time, you could add a dummy item called "[ ] Complete parent task" at the end of the subtask list in order to keep an unchecked parent with checked children consistent. The problem for me is that a tree is what I have trouble organizing. If it's just a linear list of things, I'm not sure how useful it could be for me other than by setting alarms that I could set directly. There is never a time when one of my tasks isn't to break down another task into simpler steps; all but the simplest tasks I have really have "break this down" that as the default first subtask. So one workflow datapoint for useful with subtasks, useless without subtasks.

bachmeier 4y ago

Discussion from a few months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30879327 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30879327

ozim 4y ago

I am just getting more and more convinced that any personal todo list is useless. Most useless part is priorities on personal list. If something like utility invoice is to be paid - just do it. If it is something like "read Anna Karenina" it is not getting any priority ever it is just something I would like to do in my life. So stuff that really needs to be done I will deal with without any todo list I will just remember it or deal with it right away. Stuff that does not need to be done will not get done - and that is perfectly fine. Different thing is if it is company "todo" list and I need to keep customer requests, well JIRA does the job. In the end don't listen to me because there are many much more successful people than me, I am simply happy with what I achieved so far, maybe I would achieve more with todo lists but somehow I fail to see how these would help me in living my life.

kstrauser 4y ago
My problem is that I'll never remember to do those things on my own. I have repeating items for things that seem obvious but that life experience has demonstrated that I just can't track on my own. I wish I could remember to order flowers for my wife in time for them to be delivered before our anniversary, but I won't. A todo app for me is a lifesaver: instead of being all stressed out that I'm forgetting something important, I can get all that stuff out of my head and concentrate on other things.
- sixstringtheory 4y ago
  Isn't a repeating calendar event with an alert a better tool for this? But then you have to remember to check your calendar or to do the thing that alert you just snoozed/ignored was reminding you to do. Don't forget to check your todo list from time to time... I have the same problem as you, of remembering things I need to do. But I've not found todo lists to actually help, in fact I find if I take too much time to maintain the list, I have less time to spend doing the things I'm supposed to do. Kind of like remembering phone numbers. I don't know anyone's phone number anymore, because I don't have to, because I have a place that I can store them all. The difference is that the phone dials it for me when I tap it; my todo list doesn't carry out the tasks I write on it, but it does help me to forget them faster! It's some mixture of https://xkcd.com/1906/ https://xkcd.com/1906/, https://xkcd.com/927/ https://xkcd.com/927/ and https://xkcd.com/1319/ https://xkcd.com/1319/

kstrauser 4y ago

How does this compare with TaskPaper, like https://guide.taskpaper.com/getting-started/ https://guide.taskpaper.com/getting-started/? TaskPaper is sophisticated enough that OmniFocus can use it as a serialization format.

jotaen 4y ago
I’ve never used TaskPaper, but the capabilities of the data format look somewhat similar. I think the difference is primarily a philosophical one: [x]it! is a file format with a formal specification that’s open source.[1] There is no “canonical” tool for it, the idea is rather that tools can be created separately. That should give users the freedom to work with their data independent of specific tools. [1] https://github.com/jotaen/xit/blob/main/Specification.md https://github.com/jotaen/xit/blob/main/Specification.md
- kstrauser 4y ago
  That's fair. I could've sworn that TaskPaper was an actual spec, but when looking just now I couldn't find it.
  - jotaen 4y ago
    The maintainer wrote something about this here: https://support.hogbaysoftware.com/t/where-is-taskpapers-file-format-defined/2098 https://support.hogbaysoftware.com/t/where-is-taskpapers-fil...
    - kstrauser 4y ago
      I saw that, and neither of those repos have been updated in the last 6 years. (Maybe they're still up to date? I have no idea.)

jxi 4y ago

I’ll give this a shot since he went through the trouble of creating a vscode extension for it.

falcolas 4y ago

For a standalone CLI, I still prefer https://github.com/todotxt/todo.txt-cli https://github.com/todotxt/todo.txt-cli - probably because there are Android and iOS clients for it, and it's based around a bash script. For vim, I just use vim-wiki, which is a superset of this functionality. Of course, looking through this thread, there's lots of different options. Which is cool.

0xbadcafebee 4y ago

I like it. Few issues: - doesn't describe handling spaces or other characters before the checkbox - doesn't support UTF-8 checkbox emoji - doesn't support nested lists - specifies a specific space character when a character class would be better - not clear what "item must not contain blank lines" means - description indentation limit of four space characters is a problem for nested items - description supporting blank lines (properly indented) would be useful for longer descriptions - date should support an ISO or other standard date format - timezone is necessary for events happening in specific timezones or across timezones

lifehasleft 4y ago
Some of your comments are described in the extended syntax specifications[0]. [0]: https://xit.jotaen.net/syntax-guide https://xit.jotaen.net/syntax-guide
jotaen 4y ago
Thanks for sharing your notes. Nesting of items is not supported, although the idea has come up. It’s on hold right now – that’s mostly due to practical reasons, because it’s relatively hard to implement in tooling. Allow me to clarify a few details regarding the spec: - There can’t be any character before the checkbox. (An item “MUST start at the beginning of a line with a checkbox.”) - A blank line is defined as “a line that is either empty, or that exclusively consists of blank characters”, and a blank character is defined as “a character from the Unicode Space Separator category (Zs)”. So the description text of an item (that can span multiple lines) cannot contain a line that’s all blank. Reason is that a blank or empty line separates item groups from each other, so allowing it to appear within descriptions could create visual ambiguity. (Even though it wouldn’t be ambiguous from a purely formal standpoint.) - The format for dates is a subset of ISO-8601, except for the slashed variant (2020/12/31) that’s there for convenience, and the notation for quarters (2022-Q1).
- 0xbadcafebee 4y ago
  It would be simpler to just use the ISO date format. Otherwise people have to implement their own date parser for your stricter format, which adds code (and therefore bugs) and increases probability that people will incorrectly implement the spec. Why wouldn't you allow space before the checkbox? If somebody accidentally has a space because it's not obvious in their editor (esp. if items can be separated by two newlines) what happens? Undefined behavior? Your format looks a lot like Markdown so I wouldn't have assumed this was a spec requirement unless I looked closely (most people don't look at specs closely)

bobbyd2323 4y ago

I just use a big text file where I keep all notes and todos (do use a [] as well), separate dates in a structured way with most recent date at top. Typically edit it in emacs. It just keeps getting bigger and bigger, but it’s nice to have a single text file that I can search.

foobarbecue 4y ago

Taskwarrior uses a pain text format and is excellent. It's my daily driver todo list. https://taskwarrior.org https://taskwarrior.org

shagie 4y ago
An online site that does task warrior sync - https://inthe.am https://inthe.am

NoboruWataya 4y ago

I like the simplicity of it. Sorry if I've missed it but are there already good tools built around this?

jotaen 4y ago
There currently are a bunch of editor plugins and one CLI tool. You find a collection of tools (all third-party) linked from the project website: https://xit.jotaen.net https://xit.jotaen.net

NonNefarious 4y ago

miralize 4y ago

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

bitwrangler 4y ago

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)

gofreddygo 4y ago
> grep and sort tasks to make sense of things This. grep + sort + awk = unbelievable single person task management effectiveness. And it was right under my nose all the while. I've dumbed my version even further, I just use numbers. every line starting with 1 is highest Priority and so on. another important piece i needed was a pointer to where i last left off. I just use double underscores "__". next time just open and search for 2 underscores and start right off. Works everywhere.
- 082349872349872 4y ago
  Doug McIlroy recounts how early use of egrep for personal calendars led to Al Aho improving its algorithm: https://minnie.tuhs.org/pipermail/tuhs/2022-August/026336.html https://minnie.tuhs.org/pipermail/tuhs/2022-August/026336.ht...
- gofreddygo 4y ago
  Side note: for weekly personal todos and tasks, I have not found a better way than a whiteboard or a piece of paper stuck on the wall. Paper on the wall is better in many ways (e.g. easy to rip off when guests are coming over, folds into the pocket to take it with you for shopping, scan it, etc) I use plain text files for longer term tasks and todos. One file per project.

freebit50 4y ago

I came up a personal solution to Kanban's in a text file years ago. It's pretty simple in concept and easy to type. Here it is: - means not started. * is in progress. + is complete.

Stan42 4y ago
I see Kanban, I upvote ! Thanks for moving the challenge forward. May I share with you one of our articles that talks about it, hope it helps :) https://zenkit.com/en/blog/kanban-explained-what-youve-always-wanted-to-know/ https://zenkit.com/en/blog/kanban-explained-what-youve-alway...
ralferoo 4y ago
I shifted from text-files for todo lists to using an adapted Bullet Journal 3 or 4 years back. Some times I neglect it for a few weeks at a time, but I've found it really useful on the times when I have used it extensively. In many ways, the todo section has similarities to Kanban. But anyway, one convention I picked up from there is: - for a comment - something to remind yourself of the context or information to remember . for a task you want to do date . for a task that needs to be done on/by a certain date / for a task that is started X for a completed task > for a task that moved to a later page It's a great system especially as transition from one state to another is just the addition of a line so very easy to do with pen and paper. Also, the act of transferring uncompleted tasks to a new page every week/month depending on preference makes it a great time to assess if things on the todo list are still worth doing as well as giving you a gentle reminder to get on and do them if they are.

taude 4y ago

Reminds me a bit of the Sublime Plugin PlainTasks that I used 10 years ago, or so [1] [2] [1] https://github.com/aziz/PlainTasks https://github.com/aziz/PlainTasks [2] https://www.linux-magazine.com/Online/Blogs/Productivity-Sauce/Turn-Sublime-Text-into-a-Task-Manager-with-the-PlainTasks-Plugin https://www.linux-magazine.com/Online/Blogs/Productivity-Sau...

jbverschoor 4y ago

I can only recommend NotePlan instead

tambourine_man 4y ago

I like it and have used a similar homegrown solution for years. I’d love to switch to a better supported one, but please: work in progress is obviously […] Not ... but the actual … character which takes the same horizontal space as X on monospaced fonts. Maybe use it as a second option? Nice work, thanks for sharing.

nvllsvm 4y ago
That character is not directly on keyboards, so it requires additional, OS-specific knowledge to type it.
- tambourine_man 4y ago
  I don’t know. That’s a very common character.
jotaen 4y ago
Thanks for your feedback. I think for the status characters there are a lot of imaginable variations and preferences. In the end, I thought that restricting the spec to a single character per status would help to confine the overall complexity of the file format, so it’s a bit of a tradeoff.

upen946 4y ago

Nice. Supports emoji's? Looks like the UTF-8 is not yet supported directly.

jotaen 4y ago
[x]it! files are UTF-8 encoded by default. The predefined syntactical elements (such as checkboxes, priorities, or due dates) are composed from ASCII characters, but outside of that (e.g. in item descriptions) you can use all available Unicode characters without restriction.

mjh2539 4y ago

Just use org-mode.

nvllsvm 4y ago
How's vim/neovim compatibilty these days? Org-mode is appealing, but vim/neovim support wasn't great last time I checked.
- mjh2539 4y ago
  I can't say. I use emacs.

chrismorgan 4y ago

> Letter: a character from the Unicode Letter category (L) This definition is insufficient for many scripts, such as Indic scripts. My name “Chris” is written in Telugu as “క్రిస్”: letter ka, sign virama (which suppresses the inherent vowel, and also joins the next letter and vowel sign as a conjunct in this instance, as part of the same syllable—if you didn’t want that, you’d insert a ZERO-WIDTH NON-JOINER and get క్ రి [minus the space, HN turned by ZWNJ into a space :/] instead of క్రి), letter ra, vowel sign i, letter sa, sign virama (which this time just suppresses the inherent vowel). Six code points, of which three are Other_Letter (part of Letter) and three Nonspacing_Mark (part of Mark, not Letter). Unicode’s Letter general category is almost never what you want. To begin with, you should instead use the “Alphabetic” property, which examination of https://www.unicode.org/reports/tr44/#Alphabetic https://www.unicode.org/reports/tr44/#Alphabetic and https://www.unicode.org/reports/tr44/#GC_Values_Table https://www.unicode.org/reports/tr44/#GC_Values_Table shows to be a superset of Letter, adding the Letter_Number (Nl) general category and the Other_Lowercase, Other_Uppercase and Other_Alphabetic properties. But actually, even Alphabetic isn’t quite the right tool: some scripts don’t separate words with non-alphabetical characters, and some scripts use non-alphabetical characters in the middle of words (e.g. ZWJ and ZWNJ in Indic texts, or apostrophes in English). For most correct results, I believe you actually need to get into full text segmentation to find word breaks, as defined in UAX #29 <https://www.unicode.org/reports/tr29/ https://www.unicode.org/reports/tr29/>. As usual: language is fiendishly complicated. The other definitions are a strange mixture. Digit is ASCII-only, which makes sense for due date, but is inconsistent with Unicode letters elsewhere. > The tag name MUST only contain letters, digits, or the characters _ or -. It MUST be treated as case-insensitive. This is somewhat poorly defined, and I’m confident that from such a definition you’ll get multiple incompatible implementations. I would say that you probably want to specify something based on Unicode’s caseless matching; see https://www.unicode.org/versions/Unicode14.0.0/ch05.pdf#G21790 https://www.unicode.org/versions/Unicode14.0.0/ch05.pdf#G217... which will give you much to read and despair of ever understanding. (The whole two and a bit pages of that subsection are worth reading. And I wouldn’t complain if you decided it was worth reading a lot more of the Unicode spec.) But in this place, I don’t think you actually want letters/digits/_/- anyway. I think that for tag names you’d do better with using UAX #31 <https://www.unicode.org/reports/tr31/ https://www.unicode.org/reports/tr31/> identifiers of some form. Note its optional medial characters (how you’d add -), its “hashtag identifiers”, and its remarks on case folding.

abhaysrivastav 4y ago

This is very cool. Only if i could pin my todolist on desktop.

qudat 4y ago

Very cool. For those that want to blog their lists, https://lists.sh https://lists.sh has been a lot of fun. https://erock.lists.sh/knowledge-management-apps https://erock.lists.sh/knowledge-management-apps

hboon 4y ago

I have been abusing a convoluted version of Markdown for this: ::ProjectA --- @@@Things to do @@@Sub-tasks @@Things to do, but not right away * Things done ::ProjectB --- @@@Another thing Easy to search for things like: "@@@" for the current TODO (and also show it in the menu bar with SwiftBar) "::ProjectName" to look for projects "* " to keep in a date-stamped file. I have kept such files since 2009. gist that preserves formatting: https://gist.github.com/hboon/2684da05fe6c5d7afbcbaa4d847824ac https://gist.github.com/hboon/2684da05fe6c5d7afbcbaa4d847824...

goplayoutside 4y ago

Obligatory xkcd: https://xkcd.com/927/ https://xkcd.com/927/ Seriously though, this looks great.

kidsil 4y ago

Why not Orgmode? I've been using it on multiple devices without any problems. I still occasionally edit it as text (when I'm on a machine without Emacs/Orgzly).

Last5Digits 4y ago
Have you found a good way to use org-mode on your phone? I remember trying to find a suitable app for weeks, but without any success. Even simple things, like following links into other files, were not possible. Edit: Ah, I missed you mentioning Orgzly. Last time I used it, I had a lot of trouble with syncing due to its way of storing files in a notebook. Everytime I deleted a file on any other device, Orgzly would just recreate the file and sync it back to all other devices. And when I tried it, it didn't support links to org-IDs.
- dumpsterlid 4y ago
  I like orgzly but in my opinion orgro is even better. I think a critical point of usability with mobile has been met with org mode.
- kidsil 4y ago
  Orgzly with Syncthing has been my setup for years.
- liyuankui 4y ago
  Must mention Logseq. Logseq support org-mode as first class format. https://trello.com/c/z651hP7v/1116-org-mode-support https://trello.com/c/z651hP7v/1116-org-mode-support I don't think Logseq has realized how this feature can win popularity, since you can't find anything on org-mode in their website. (Always markdown, LOL)
dumpsterlid 4y ago
Honestly people wanting to make a hobby project from scratch and then brag about it in a blog post to make themselves look like a more savy programmer/techie (hey, not blaming people, when it is done well it is way better than a resume with bullet points) is primarily the reason they dont use org mode. It is like wondering why people go through massive amounts of efforts to bake stuff from scratch when there is a super market and bakery down the street, except it is also like I said a resume. If you want a plain text organizational, compositional and scheduling tool that you can use for the rest of your life and know that 30 years down the line it will be actively supported, developed and you will be able to tweak anything you want.... emacs/org mode is by far and away the best choice. It isn't even remotely close, we are talking about the difference between a planet and a tiny asteroid when you compare org mode to other plain textish organizational, compositional and scheduling tools. For as long as humanity doesn't collapse and probably even after it does org mode and emacs will be used (there is going to be some nerd somewhere using org mode and ledger cli to meticulously track how many smoked rats and cockroach kebobs they have left to eat before they have to leave their bunker), there is just such an intense critical mass of utility under an open source license. About the only bad thing with org mode at this point is it has such a vast nexus of interconnected capability it is difficult to even describe what exactly it is anymore lol. Like how would you even adequately describe org mode in a single sentence? It would have to be a Thomas Pynchon style sentence lol.

Kalanos 4y ago

In my experience, your titles need to be more visually distinct for when lists get long `====== MORNING ERRANDS ======` Is it good at indented text wrapping?

jotaen 4y ago
You’d be free to format your titles like that, if you prefer. The only restriction for titles is that the line cannot start with whitespace or `[`. Not sure what you mean by the text wrapping bit, but I think that appropriate/pleasant text wrapping would be a concern of an editor.

parski 4y ago

Why pad priority with dots? Why pad priority at all? The date format will allow bad clients to do the American yyyy-dd-mm thing, using a standard would make it unambiguous.

imomochi 4y ago
> Why pad priority with dots? Why pad priority at all? It's optional, so I'd assume it's for people who want to start the sentence from same aligned column. > The date format will allow bad clients to do the American yyyy-dd-mm thing, using a standard would make it unambiguous. Isn't 2022-08-23 the standard format; ISO 8601?
- jotaen 4y ago
  > It's optional, so I'd assume it's for people who want to start the sentence from same aligned column. Yes, visual alignment is the first purpose; the other is if you want to sort your lines lexically (as described elsewhere in this discussion), then the dots enable deterministic ordering, because exclamation marks sort before dots. > The date format will allow bad clients to do the American yyyy-dd-mm thing, using a standard would make it unambiguous. The format for dates is a subset of ISO-8601, except for the slashed variant (2020/12/31) that’s there for convenience, and the notation for quarters (2022-Q1).

ChrisArchitect 4y ago

More discussion just 5 months ago shared by the author https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30879327 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30879327

tpoacher 4y ago

I use a mostly identical system, except instead of lines in a textfile, I use files in a folder, where the status is denoted by the extention. If you also assign specific icons per extension, which you can do e.g in Total commander, you have a nice icon-coded todo list. Using files instead of lines has several advantages. E.g. you can add notes in an item. Copy paste/link across projects etc. Search items vs in-text. Use dotfiles or ignore-patterns to hide/unhide items, associate certain tasks with specific apps (e.g. calendar) ... etc etc. Have been using this for more than a decade, works great.

metaketa 4y ago

This should be integrated into Markwhen.com