# - a "note" contains neither bullet nor checkbox # - a "task" contains a checkbox and possibly a bullet Here’s a little grammar, written in Janet: # This grammar recognizes three types of line: So I wanted a format that’s optimized for making lists in plain text and eminently human-workable. Some lists represent a group, some represent a sequence, and though the difference might be known to the reader, being able to make the difference explicit is a feature, not a bug, and not bloat. Notes, which are useful for explaining items.Īlso, it might be nice to be able to specify item order.Headers, which are useful for grouping items.Statuses, which designate a task’s state (active, stuck, done, etc).Checkboxes, which distinguish tasks from other list items and carry its status.Bullets, which designate list items and distinguish list items from notes.So what information do we want to represent? Lists and todo lists, which include: What are the properties of a task? Assigner, assignee, priority, order, completion status, dates, subtasks, etc.ĭo we want to represent all that here? No. Is that all? Maybe also a title, maybe also notes. Though tags are a more general and flexible mechanism (especially when tags can contain values, like checkboxes provide a nice bit of syntactic sugar. Its syntax doesn’t include checkboxes-instead, it uses tags (in the form of to indicate a task’s status. This belongs to section 2, which belongs to section 1. This issue isn’t limited to org-mode-any information-hierarchy system that nests subsections with bullets, text size, etc, inherits it. How to resume section 1? This belongs to section 2. A section header consumes everything under it. And its nesting rules can sometimes be inconvenient-because it uses duplicated asterisks for section nesting, it’s not possible to resume a section if it contains a subsection. Other parts of its syntax are a bit unsightly (like its :tags:). With org-mode: it’s a huge program, so isn’t quite optimized for lists, so has some syntax that detracts from the experience. I have small gripes with both-they’re both pretty perfect. Before that, I used TaskPaper (and taskpaper-mode after switching to Linux). Prior to this, for lists, I’ve been using org-mode. I needed a todo list that fit in my bigass text file and whose contents I could extract with scripts to, for example, include in my morning calendar/reminder email, or move completed items from the main list to the day’s journal entry, etc. Construction is life, and if improvements can be made, the future will thank us for making them. I’m also finding it useful, not only as a program for making lists but as a part of a suite of programs I’ve been building for managing (my) personal information (another part of which is a calendar).Īnyway, I’m not the only one designing a new todo list. The answer, of course, is no, but I built one anyway, and I like it and making it was fun and edifying and that alone is enough to justify its creation. Does The World Really Need Another Todo List Tool?
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