Item — HN Reader

I used todo.txt for a while, but in the end I stopped using the CLI tool and just worked with the files directly. For my use cases, the todo.txt file format has a few shortcomings and inconveniences, and there also is no dedicated specification.

That being said, I drew a great deal of inspiration from todo.txt, and I think it’s a well-made and powerful tool.

1 comments

This is very cool, thanks for sharing! I'm a huge proponent of tool-less things, and a consistent todo list format readable in any text editor has been extremely helpful for me. I use my own markdown-inspired todo+notes format, but looking through xit and todo.txt has given me some ideas, specifically around my format's[1] inability to indicate priority when a line is taken out of context.

Question: why must the square brackets be used[2]? Could not the first and third chars be omitted, leaving only the status of the item as the first char on the line? I can see (and appreciate!) the desire to use brackets for readability, but if there's a functional benefit I'm not sure I see it at first glance.

I especially like your use of `!` and `#`, that's a nice way to make those items accessible through a grep.

[1]: Each day begins with a `\n# YYYY-MM-DD` section heading, then I use the ordering of my day's tasks in the list to indicate priority. `- ` prefixes an incomplete task, `* ` prefixes a completed task, `~ ` prefixes an obsolete task (similar to your xit), and a generic note doesn't have any predefined first char. One or more pair(s) of spaces indent subtasks or notes as appropriate.

[2]: https://github.com/jotaen/xit/blob/main/Specification.md

> Question: why must the square brackets be used[2]?

There is no technical benefit behind the square bracket notation. As you mentioned, it’s mostly for readability reasons. My take on pleasant plain-text formats is to make use of symbolic notation if ever possible, because that makes the format more intuitive to understand. The `[ ]` resemble a check box, and it should be immediately clear what that means. The drawback is that you need to type in 2 extra characters, of course, so it’s really a tradeoff in the end.

Like you and many others, i use my own similar format, and the brackets actually come in handy for those rare cases when there is a need to print out (yes, as in harccopy paper; oh the humanity)...because they resemble good ol' fashion checkboxes. ;-)