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

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  • xit

    A plain-text file format for todos and check lists

    > do you plan support for text unrelated to tasks ?

    I haven’t thought about that much yet. I’ve tracked it here for it to be discussed: https://github.com/jotaen/xit/discussions/10

    > do you plan support for sections / nested sections?

    I think that would be cool and useful, but I need to play around with that more. There is already a ticket for it: https://github.com/jotaen/xit/discussions/2

    > idea suggestion: in tax (linked above) we use markdown bold to notify "focused" tasks and sections

    I think that’s similar to the priorities:

        [ ] !!! Do this

  • todo.txt-cli

    ☑️ A simple and extensible shell script for managing your todo.txt file.

    There is a todo format that I use daily called todotxt. It has even application support on most platforms or you just write manually in a txt file. Easy to overview by yourself. In combination with Syncthing I have a very seamless experience where ever I go.

    http://todotxt.org/

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  • noted

    Lightweight CLI for taking markdown notes in a journal-like (time-seried) fashion

    This is really cool. I am endlessly fascinated by the proliferation of "productivity apps" when I find the same thing as you: that they are quite unnecessary.

    My approach is similar. I already take notes via a Bash script. I configure a particular "label" for any todos and (essentially) just grep for them, excluding those that are crossed out (with Markdown tildes). This approach works great for me as a Staff Engineer in a large tech company. Reference: https://github.com/scottashipp/noted/blob/main/subcommands.m...

    I also wanted to mention there are several related ideas / movements around the web. One of the biggest is todotxt. In case you hadn't heard of it: https://github.com/todotxt/todo.txt

  • todo.txt

    ‼️ A complete primer on the whys and hows of todo.txt.

    This is really cool. I am endlessly fascinated by the proliferation of "productivity apps" when I find the same thing as you: that they are quite unnecessary.

    My approach is similar. I already take notes via a Bash script. I configure a particular "label" for any todos and (essentially) just grep for them, excluding those that are crossed out (with Markdown tildes). This approach works great for me as a Staff Engineer in a large tech company. Reference: https://github.com/scottashipp/noted/blob/main/subcommands.m...

    I also wanted to mention there are several related ideas / movements around the web. One of the biggest is todotxt. In case you hadn't heard of it: https://github.com/todotxt/todo.txt

  • clikan

    clikan is a super simple personal kanban board that runs in a CLI

    This is awesome! Super appreciate the effort on this.

    One challenge I've had is the file-based concept. And it losing "shape" quickly. I taken a few whacks at something different and have settled on a CLI-based kanban-y thing: https://github.com/kitplummer/clikan

    But this lacks things like tags - which I appreciate as long as they are searchable in some form.

  • nb

    CLI and local web plain text note‑taking, bookmarking, and archiving with linking, tagging, filtering, search, Git versioning & syncing, Pandoc conversion, + more, in a single portable script.

    nb might be worth a look (has tags) https://xwmx.github.io/nb/

  • vimwiki

    Personal Wiki for Vim

    https://github.com/vimwiki/vimwiki

    You can get plugins that sync it to a git repository. I love this.

    There's also task warrior plugins, though I haven't figured out how that would for me, seems to get away from simple text files at that point.

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  • neorg

    Discontinued Modernity meets insane extensibility. The future of organizing your life in Neovim. [Moved to: https://github.com/nvim-neorg/neorg] (by vhyrro)

  • rodo

    Rodo is a terminal-based todo manager written in Ruby

    Nice! I also have this pain of the file losing shape quickly. My take is to have a a CLI tool to "carry over" all todos which aren't solved into a new heading. This way the old/resolved items are moved to the back/lower in the file.

    I call it Rodo (Todos in Ruby): https://github.com/coezbek/rodo

    It uses Markdown for syntax.

  • ConsoleJournal

    I made this which is suitable for my needs when mixed with Obsidian. https://github.com/navjack/ConsoleJournal/blob/main/journal....

  • GitJournal

    Mobile first Note Taking integrated with Git

    > A formal spec also doesn't help much for apps to use this format. There is not a huge need for portability between to do apps, and for most users to do items are ephemeral and not something that needs to be archived and revisited. Even if an app adopted this, being tied to a plain text format would likely hinder feature development, including the ability to sync across multiple devices. Beyond that, different to do apps use different systems of categorization and tagging, so really in practice I doubt this will become any kind of standardized format.

    I disagree. I maintain a rather popular plain-text-based app [1] and the formal spec makes this something very very easy to add support for. Infact the only thing that could make this even easier is if there was a way to verify my own implementation.

    [1] https://gitjournal.io

  • orgdown

    +1 for plain-text for all the points you mention, particularly "data-first with tools on top". But why reinvent the wheel when the org-mode format is well established and does everything you want, and more?

    There are an increasing number of tools using org-mode as a plain-text data store, so you are more likely to be able to participate in a tool ecosystem. In addition to my own https://braintool.org see the list below. BrainTool (mainly a bookmark manager) has an elemental to-do system, I'd love to have my users be able to use your tool for todos.

    NB see also Karl Voit's push for org markup awareness outside of Emacs via Orgdown: https://gitlab.com/publicvoit/orgdown.

    ------

  • orgro

    An Org Mode file viewer for iOS and Android

  • organice

    An implementation of Org mode without the dependency of Emacs - built for mobile and desktop browsers

  • logseq

    A local-first, non-linear, outliner notebook for organizing and sharing your personal knowledge base. Use it to organize your todo list, to write your journals, or to record your unique life.

  • syncthing-android

    Wrapper of syncthing for Android.

  • tax

    CLI Task List Manager

    Wow such a coincidence! I recently toyed on such a spec for my shell prompt task manager https://github.com/netgusto/tax

    I'm certainly going to look into implementing the spec.

    Some questions/suggestions:

  • journal

    Minimalistic CLI helper for taking notes and tracking TODOs. (by lbcnz)

    I had a similar insight some years ago. I write my TODOs mixed with text in markdown notes and use a CLI to do nice things like exploration and journaling. It purposefully doesn't have any state besides the notes in itself.

    https://github.com/danisztls/journal

    Lately I'm rarely using it because most of the things that I really have to do (work) are on my email inbox or containerized in project dirs. And for the later I just run 'rg "TODO:"' in the project dir.

  • zim-desktop-wiki

    Main repository of the zim desktop wiki project

    After having tried many of those, my caveman brain seems to like Zim the most: https://zim-wiki.org/

    Plain-text files, simple UI on top, shortcuts for common things. Anything more complex makes me want to spend all my available time on organizing my notes, which ultimately adds very little value to my life. Plaintext files with a fast search utility gets you 97% of the way there.

    I used to use VSCode for a long time, but ticking checkboxes without a shortcut pushed me to look for an alternative (I know there are extensions for that, but Zim has some other nifty stuff like templates for daily journals etc).

  • org-parser

    org-parser is a parser for the Org mode markup language for Emacs.

    There's at least a parser using that as a spec at https://github.com/200ok-ch/org-parser

  • orgajs

    parse org-mode content into AST

  • sublimetext-zenburn-theme

    Hand-crafted port of Zenburn from Vim. Low-contrast theme designed to be easy on your eyes. Embrace the Zen.

    This is really cool. I dig it.

    I like that there's a Sublime Text package for it. Seeing my plain text todos with nice syntax highlighting is a perk.

    I maintain a Zenburn color scheme[0] for Sublime Text. After playing with this, I added specialized support for [x]it! and I think it looks pretty good[1].

    [0]: https://packagecontrol.io/packages/Zenburn%20Color%20Scheme

    [1]: https://github.com/ryanolsonx/sublimetext-zenburn-theme/issu...

  • xit-sublime

    [x]it! support for working with todo and check list files in Sublime Text

    That’s how it works in Sublime, yes. You have a regex-based parsing engine that you configure via a YAML file, and there you assign scopes to the tokens.[1]

    As a default, the [x]it! Sublime Package uses the available default scopes. The user can choose to override the associated colours in their local settings.[2]

    [1]: https://github.com/jotaen/xit-sublime/blob/main/xit.sublime-...

    [2]: https://github.com/jotaen/xit-sublime#syntax-highlighting--c...

  • orgmode

    Orgmode clone written in Lua for Neovim 0.9+.

    There are implementations for other editors, for example NeoVim[1].

    [1] https://github.com/nvim-orgmode/orgmode

  • toodoo.el

    A magical interface to manage Todos built ontop of Org

    Shameless plug. For those who use Orgmode, but think that Agenda is a bit too heavyweight to manage Todos, I created a Magit like interface to manage Todos (in an orgmode file): https://github.com/ChanderG/toodoo.el

  • grit

    Multitree-based personal task manager

    *

    By specifying order through indentation, we've now created a DAG for what needs to be done, in what order, with the most actionable tasks having the largest indentation. This is how I organize my plaintext to-do files, but afaict no todo list software is able to handle this gracefully- with the exception of grit, which is more of an experiment (but the readme is incredibly well written and describes DAG problem to a tee).

    https://github.com/climech/grit

    Does anyone know if org-mode handles complex trees? All the examples I've found online were trivial (i.e. one task deep)

  • bash-modules

    Useful modules for bash

    IMHO, you are mixing TODO lists and task management/planning software. No, I don't know a good task manager or business process manager for command line. Instead, I created a simpler TODO list manager, called `td`[0], which supports flat TODO lists only, and use directories and command-line generators to manage todo's. `td` prints top item only, by default, leaving little room for procrastination. I'm keeping one `TODO.md` file per project instead of one large TODO file for all todo's.

    [0]: https://github.com/vlisivka/bash-modules/blob/master/bash-mo...

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