todd - a lightweight cli to-do list program

cesura · 2011-03-31 05:46:34

Introduction
I've been kind of shocked by the lack of to-do list managers in the world, particularly lightweight ones (or I'm just not searching enough). Why was it so hard to find an unobtrusive to-do program? So I decided to whip out the ol' C compiler and see what I could do; todd was born!

What is it?
Todd is, as hinted to by the title, a command-line program for managing to-do lists. No GTK, no ncurses, no nothing.

Why would you want to use it?
With todd, you can keep track of all the activities in your hectic life. So if you ever feel the need to mow the lawn after you finish your important university essay, or maybe just shave your rare Swedish goat, todd can help you remember what you have done and what you still need to do.

Why would Al Gore want to use it?
No more pads of paper, man.

Can I have a demonstration?
Certainly! I'll use my example above:

$ todd add "Finish paper"
$ todd add "Mow lawn"
$ todd add "Shave goat"

Todd now has a list of your newly added activities, which you can view:

$ todd
1 [ ] Finish paper
2 [ ] Mow lawn
3 [ ] Shave goat

So although you've had many distractions along the way, your paper is finally done! Let's mark that off the list:

$ todd mark 1

Let's see what our list looks like now:

$ todd
1 [*] Finish paper
2 [ ] Mow lawn
3 [ ] Shave goat

Wait! We don't want to display our already-completed tasks, right? I mean, we're busy people, and we just don't have time to sift through all of our tasks. Let's narrow it down to the things we still need to do:

$ todd list incomp
2 [ ] Mow lawn
3 [ ] Shave goat

Unfortunately, our goat is getting a little squirmy, so let's shave some of that hair off of the little guy. [buzz] That's completely done, let's just remove it from the list:

$ todd rm 3

So now we have:

$ todd
1 [*] Finish paper
2 [ ] Mow lawn

Uh-oh! While you were you shaving your beloved goat-friend, you remembered an important part of your paper that you had neglected. Time to mark that as incomplete:

$ todd unmark 1

This gives you a running total of:

$ todd
1 [ ] Finish paper
2 [ ] Mow lawn

How does it work?
Todd has a special format for storing tasks in text files. When the todd program is called, these normally cryptic text files are parsed and displayed on the screen in the format of a to-do list. Because of this, todd lists are very portable. This means that you can attach a to-do list to an email to the freelancer that you are hiring to write your university paper in the first place.

Where can I get it?
I currently have it placed in the AUR:
http://aur.archlinux.org/packages.php?ID=47826

You can download the PKGBUILD yourself or use your favorite AUR helper.

I have a problem with it!
I have done a pretty thorough job (in my opinion) of weeding out all bugs in the software (there can't be too many in only ~600 SLOC). However, if you happen to find one, please (pretty please) add a post to this thread.

Usage instructions
These can be found using:

$ todd help

Usage: todd [FILE] [ACTION] [PARAMETERS]...
[FILE] points to a local todo list somewhere on your system
* If you do not include this option, the default todo list is used
[ACTION] is one of the following actions you can execute:
add add an entry (or entries) to your loaded todo list
remove, rm remove an entry (or entries)
clear clear the currently-loaded list
mark mark an entry (or entries) as completed
unmark unmark an entry (or entries) as completed
tier, rank place an importantance ranking on a task
list print a list of your current todo list
create create a new todd todo list
delete, del delete a todo list
version print the current version of todd
help display this list
[PARAMETERS] are additional sets of information given to each action:
add [ENTRY's]
remove, rm [ENTRY #'s] or [STRING's]
mark [ENTRY #'s] or [STRING's]
unmark [ENTRY #'s] or [STRING's]
tier, rank [ENTRY #'s] [RANK]
list [FILTER]
create [NAME] [OPTION]
delete, del [NAME]
* The [RANK] flag for the 'tier/rank' option accepts
a ranking using the numbers 1-5
* The [OPTION] flag for the 'create' action can be set
to 'int' to create an internal list (in ~/.todd), or left
blank for a local list
* The 'delete/del' action will search and delete lists
in the current directory before looking at the lists
stored in the ~/.todd directory
* The 'remove/rm', 'mark', and 'unmark' actions accept
more than one number and/or search string at once
* If no actions are selected, the currently-loaded
todo list will be printed.
The [FILTER] parameter to the 'list' action accepts a few options:
list comp list only completed tasks
list incomp list only incomplete tasks
list gt [RANK] list only tasks that have a greater rank than [RANK]
list lt [RANK] list only tasks that have a lesser rank than [RANK]
list [RANK] list only tasks with a rank of [RANK]
list byrank list all tasks in order by rank (1-5)
* If no parameters are passed to the 'list' action,
both complete and incomplete tasks will be shown.
* You may combine filters for this action. For example, to display
only those incomplete tasks with an importance greater than 3, you
can do 'todd list incomp gt 3'

What do I need?
Todd depends on no external software/libraries.

EDIT (04/01/2011): Version 0.2.1 has been released. It is strongly recommended that you update to this version, as a major problem was solved. The software may not always function correctly if you decide not to update.

Last edited by cesura (2011-05-02 21:57:44)

Army · 2011-03-31 09:51:13

Installed and ready to be tested. Thanks for the contribution!

Inxsible · 2011-03-31 13:59:25

Good stuff
Enhancement request : Can you mark with something other than numbers? What if I don't remember whether saving the goat was task 1 or 500? Do I have to skim through 500 tasks to find out the number and then mark it?

So I propose a grep like function -- which will show me

$ todd --grep "Shave goat"
375 [] Shave goat

then I can

todd mark 375

Even better if you can do it in the same command by merging them both.

$ todd mark $(todd --grep "Shave goat")

PS: Yes... My bash skills are shitty.

Stalafin · 2011-03-31 16:31:29

Why would you want him to implement that into todd? You can already just pipe todd's output into grep:

$ todd | grep "Shave goat"
1 [ ] Shave goat

Inxsible · 2011-03-31 17:15:34

Oh I know that...but the main aim was to see it and mark/remove it in a single command and I know that can be done as well.

Stalafin · 2011-03-31 17:24:47

Inxsible wrote:

Oh I know that...but the main aim was to see it and mark/remove it in a single command and I know that can be done as well.

$ todd rm $( todd | awk '/Shave goat/ {print $1; exit}' )

EDIT: But yeah, you might have a point. I think what one could implement is todd either accepting strings or ints, and behaving accordingly. :-)

Last edited by Stalafin (2011-03-31 17:26:31)

cesura · 2011-03-31 18:58:37

Army wrote:

Installed and ready to be tested. Thanks for the contribution!

Of course! Thank you.

Inxsible wrote:

Good stuff
Enhancement request : Can you mark with something other than numbers? What if I don't remember whether saving the goat was task 1 or 500? Do I have to skim through 500 tasks to find out the number and then mark it?
So I propose a grep like function -- which will show me
$ todd --grep "Shave goat"
375 [] Shave goat
then I can
todd mark 375
Even better if you can do it in the same command by merging them both.
$ todd mark $(todd --grep "Shave goat")
PS: Yes... My bash skills are shitty.

Stalafin wrote:

EDIT: But yeah, you might have a point. I think what one could implement is todd either accepting strings or ints, and behaving accordingly. :-)

Good ideas! I had actually planned on making a search function before, but then remembered that grep would work just fine, as you pointed out.

I suppose something like this would work well, marking all items with the word "Shave" in them:

$ todd mark "Shave"
$ todd list comp
375 [*] Shave goat

frostyfrog · 2011-04-01 15:02:32

Looks nice and easy. I'll have to try it out when I get home, and I'll try to compare against http://aur.archlinux.org/packages.php?ID=7673 and see which is better

ga01f4733 · 2011-04-01 15:52:57

Nice app itsbrad212,

let's see if it can hold my never ending pending list!

thanks,

cesura · 2011-04-01 16:19:33

ga01f4733 wrote:

Nice app itsbrad212,
let's see if it can hold my never ending pending list!
thanks,

Thanks. I've actually just recently noticed a bug in todd that occurs occasionally when long-winded tasks are added and then marked. I suppose I'll spend my day figuring that out.

EDIT: Should be fixed in todd version 0.2. Tell me if you experience any problems with it.

frostyfrog wrote:

Looks nice and easy. I'll have to try it out when I get home, and I'll try to compare against http://aur.archlinux.org/packages.php?ID=7673 and see which is better

Ah, I never noticed todotxt. Looks very useful, although I tried it and it seemed to be over-complicating things.

Last edited by cesura (2011-04-01 16:53:19)

cesura · 2011-04-10 04:20:40

Version 0.2.3 has been released, which fixes some rare occurances due to improper initialization of variables (many thanks to olcc).

Changelog 0.2.3 wrote:

* Fixed variable initialization issue

Haptic · 2011-04-10 07:12:39

Would it be possible for this to allow some sort of a deadline for each task? I don't know if that would defeat the 'lightweightedness' of the program, but I would find that really useful.

cesura · 2011-04-10 14:25:19

Haptic wrote:

Would it be possible for this to allow some sort of a deadline for each task? I don't know if that would defeat the 'lightweightedness' of the program, but I would find that really useful.

Hmm, interesting idea. I am definitely interested in implementing that into todd in the near future. Would it be more beneficial to have the deadline be a day, or a particular time within a day (or both)?

cesura · 2011-04-10 14:29:17

Version 0.3 has been released. In this version, I have added the ability to mark/unmark tasks by a search string. Now, you have the option to enter a task number or a string. Todd will parse through your list and perform the selected action on all tasks that contain that string.

Changelog 0.3 wrote:

* Added the ability to mark/unmark items by search string

Haptic · 2011-04-10 17:54:57

itsbrad212 wrote:

Haptic wrote:
Would it be possible for this to allow some sort of a deadline for each task? I don't know if that would defeat the 'lightweightedness' of the program, but I would find that really useful.
Hmm, interesting idea. I am definitely interested in implementing that into todd in the near future. Would it be more beneficial to have the deadline be a day, or a particular time within a day (or both)?

It wouldn't affect me either way, but maybe other people might.

I have some comments about custom lists. One, when you're adding stuff to you own list, why do you have to have the .todd extension on it? Two, isn't it a little inconvenient that the custom list has to be in the current working directory?

Also, maybe it would be a good idea if you could export the default todo list to a custom list.

chris-kun · 2011-04-11 19:20:53

I was thinking of making a program just like this. Looks like you beat me to it! A neat idea I had for mine (if you want to implement it in todd) was a sort of dynamic priority system. Basically, each task would have a completion date and a priority modifier, and based on this modifier the actual priority of the task would increase based on how close it is to the completion date. For example, with a priority modifier of one, and the task being due in a week, it might be six days before the priority increases at all, since you've deemed it as a 'small task' that doesn't need to be done until last minute. However, if you marked it higher, the sooner the priority would increase. Wha'cha think?

Last edited by chris-kun (2011-04-11 19:21:06)

Stalafin · 2011-04-11 19:26:26

Btw ... have a look at task warrior. I think you are getting to a point where you implement more stuff and eventually start to converge to that program...

cesura · 2011-04-12 02:33:31

Haptic wrote:

One, when you're adding stuff to you own list, why do you have to have the .todd extension on it?

Very good point. You don't have to have it, but todd creates its lists like that by default. I'll change that in the next version.

Haptic wrote:

Two, isn't it a little inconvenient that the custom list has to be in the current working directory?

You don't have to. Just use a full path.

chris-kun wrote:

I was thinking of making a program just like this. Looks like you beat me to it! A neat idea I had for mine (if you want to implement it in todd) was a sort of dynamic priority system. Basically, each task would have a completion date and a priority modifier, and based on this modifier the actual priority of the task would increase based on how close it is to the completion date. For example, with a priority modifier of one, and the task being due in a week, it might be six days before the priority increases at all, since you've deemed it as a 'small task' that doesn't need to be done until last minute. However, if you marked it higher, the sooner the priority would increase. Wha'cha think?

That's actually a really nice idea (seriously, I like it!). However, I'm going to have to agree with Stalafin on this one: the main focus of todd was to make a lightweight, out-of-your-face to-do list manager, and I don't want to stray far from that. I think someone forking todd and adding additional features would be more beneficial to the project.

JHeaton · 2011-04-12 09:39:17

Looks pretty cool, very similar to something I've been working on for the past few months (albeit using Perl instead of C); this might just put an end to that project, however!

Will be installing it and having a play as soon as I get home.

Zyhael · 2011-04-13 12:13:03

This is just what i'm looking for.. thanks for the great lightweight app!

Grinch · 2011-04-13 14:40:19

This is a sweet tool, so much better than all my 'todo.txt' files that I seem to scatter everywhere. Thanks!

JHeaton · 2011-04-13 19:04:07

itsbrad212 wrote:

chris-kun wrote:
I was thinking of making a program just like this. Looks like you beat me to it! A neat idea I had for mine (if you want to implement it in todd) was a sort of dynamic priority system. Basically, each task would have a completion date and a priority modifier, and based on this modifier the actual priority of the task would increase based on how close it is to the completion date. For example, with a priority modifier of one, and the task being due in a week, it might be six days before the priority increases at all, since you've deemed it as a 'small task' that doesn't need to be done until last minute. However, if you marked it higher, the sooner the priority would increase. Wha'cha think?
That's actually a really nice idea (seriously, I like it!). However, I'm going to have to agree with Stalafin on this one: the main focus of todd was to make a lightweight, out-of-your-face to-do list manager, and I don't want to stray far from that. I think someone forking todd and adding additional features would be more beneficial to the project.

I've only just noticed this, but I think it might be something I would consider doing because I really like the sound of that priority system and it would certainly be of use to me.

cesura · 2011-04-13 22:55:12

Version 0.4 is finally complete, and it's the largest release so far (and removed the libconfig dependency)!

Changelog 0.4 wrote:

* Migrated from sprintf() to a faster malloc()/strcpy()
* Removed the need for a todd.conf
* Removed libconfig dependency
* Moved the list directory from /usr/share/todd/ to ~/.todd/
* Removed the requirement of having a ".todd" extension
* Organized source and refactored code
* Allowed the addition of "internal" lists (in ~/.todd/) by passing
an extra option to the "create" action
* Added extra flags to the Makefile

cesura · 2011-04-13 23:01:31

JHeaton wrote:

Looks pretty cool, very similar to something I've been working on for the past few months (albeit using Perl instead of C); this might just put an end to that project, however!

Aww. It's always nice to have a little competition.

Grinch wrote:

This is a sweet tool, so much better than all my 'todo.txt' files that I seem to scatter everywhere. Thanks!

Zyhael wrote:

This is just what i'm looking for.. thanks for the great lightweight app!

Thank you both! I'm glad that it's of use to you.

JHeaton wrote:

itsbrad212 wrote:
chris-kun wrote:
I was thinking of making a program just like this. Looks like you beat me to it! A neat idea I had for mine (if you want to implement it in todd) was a sort of dynamic priority system. Basically, each task would have a completion date and a priority modifier, and based on this modifier the actual priority of the task would increase based on how close it is to the completion date. For example, with a priority modifier of one, and the task being due in a week, it might be six days before the priority increases at all, since you've deemed it as a 'small task' that doesn't need to be done until last minute. However, if you marked it higher, the sooner the priority would increase. Wha'cha think?
That's actually a really nice idea (seriously, I like it!). However, I'm going to have to agree with Stalafin on this one: the main focus of todd was to make a lightweight, out-of-your-face to-do list manager, and I don't want to stray far from that. I think someone forking todd and adding additional features would be more beneficial to the project.
I've only just noticed this, but I think it might be something I would consider doing because I really like the sound of that priority system and it would certainly be of use to me.

I suppose that would be a bit helpful, now that I think about it. If I can find a lightweight method of implementing this into todd, then I'll definitely go for it! Do you think something such as a "tier system" work well for you/other users (i.e. tasks can be marked as 1st tier for most important and, say, 5th tier for least important)?

chris-kun · 2011-04-13 23:07:50

I understand wanting to keep todd lightweight and will probably start working on my program soon so anyone wanting that functionality have that to look forward to.

Arch Linux

#1 2011-03-31 05:46:34

todd - a lightweight cli to-do list program

#2 2011-03-31 09:51:13

Re: todd - a lightweight cli to-do list program

#3 2011-03-31 13:59:25

Re: todd - a lightweight cli to-do list program

#4 2011-03-31 16:31:29

Re: todd - a lightweight cli to-do list program

#5 2011-03-31 17:15:34

Re: todd - a lightweight cli to-do list program

#6 2011-03-31 17:24:47

Re: todd - a lightweight cli to-do list program

#7 2011-03-31 18:58:37

Re: todd - a lightweight cli to-do list program

#8 2011-04-01 15:02:32

Re: todd - a lightweight cli to-do list program

#9 2011-04-01 15:52:57

Re: todd - a lightweight cli to-do list program

#10 2011-04-01 16:19:33

Re: todd - a lightweight cli to-do list program

#11 2011-04-10 04:20:40

Re: todd - a lightweight cli to-do list program

#12 2011-04-10 07:12:39

Re: todd - a lightweight cli to-do list program

#13 2011-04-10 14:25:19

Re: todd - a lightweight cli to-do list program

#14 2011-04-10 14:29:17

Re: todd - a lightweight cli to-do list program

#15 2011-04-10 17:54:57

Re: todd - a lightweight cli to-do list program

#16 2011-04-11 19:20:53

Re: todd - a lightweight cli to-do list program

#17 2011-04-11 19:26:26

Re: todd - a lightweight cli to-do list program

#18 2011-04-12 02:33:31

Re: todd - a lightweight cli to-do list program

#19 2011-04-12 09:39:17

Re: todd - a lightweight cli to-do list program

#20 2011-04-13 12:13:03

Re: todd - a lightweight cli to-do list program

#21 2011-04-13 14:40:19

Re: todd - a lightweight cli to-do list program

#22 2011-04-13 19:04:07

Re: todd - a lightweight cli to-do list program

#23 2011-04-13 22:55:12

Re: todd - a lightweight cli to-do list program

#24 2011-04-13 23:01:31

Re: todd - a lightweight cli to-do list program

#25 2011-04-13 23:07:50

Re: todd - a lightweight cli to-do list program

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