
Minimal TODOs for Linux - amouat
http://www.adrianmouat.com/bit-bucket/2012/01/minimal-todos-for-linux/
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pmr_
The problem with this kind of ad-hoc TODO lists is integration. They are
alright as long as you don't try anything fancy but this is inevitably going
to happen as soon as something gathers more users. And suddenly you hit a wall
in terms of integration and extensibility in most environments. How do I tie
in a simple link? Oh, we need links to eMails/files as well. Someone needs
more than one kind of TODO. Hierarchical TODOs would be nice. TODO
dependencies. Exporters. The list of possible features is endless and every
system that does not keep that in mind and plans for it is doomed to fail or
only usable for a very small user base, which is fine if that's your goal.

~~~
jfresh13
This is for personal productivity, not product management.

~~~
pmr_
If that is all you require, it is perfectly alright. All the features I
mentioned are not part of some product managment software but of the usual
personal productivity suites.

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lawn
I personally use taskwarrior as a less minimal todo handler. It's also very
easy to setup onto the screen with conky (as is done here).

<http://taskwarrior.org/projects/show/taskwarrior>

~~~
mlacitation
Seconding taskwarrior for being a great todo handler. It has a minimalistic
interface, but doesn't lack any features that you (might) find yourself
wanting after a while of use. The IRC channel (#taskwarrior on Freenode) is
active too. The command-line tools are perfect and let you make your system as
minimal or as complex as you want. Over time, I've:

1) Set up a cron job that pumps my current list out to a text file behind an
.htaccess'd directory. This way, I can see my list without needing SSH access.

2) I've also got a little Dashboard widget that pulls that text down, so I can
swipe to the top-left hot corner and see them at a glance.

3) I'm using Alfred (<http://www.alfredapp.com/>) on my Mac, so I wrote a
simple trigger called "task add" that connects to my box and adds it there.
There's also a few posts out there for DropBox integration if you use that.

4) I didn't write this, but if you use oh-my-zsh, there's a plugin for
Taskwarrior. I've learned about a couple options by pressing tab.

~~~
lepht
A bit late, but I'm also a huge fan of Taskwarrior- and on a slightly related
note, I wrote the oh-my-zsh plugin and was always a bit curious as to whether
anyone actually used it. Glad to hear that at least one other person finds it
useful.

I do find myself using Taskwarrior's shell mode[1] almost exclusively these
days though, as it significantly cuts down on the number of keystrokes
necessary to interact with my todo list. If you wrap task shell in rlwrap[2]
you can still get autocompletion from within the shell.

[1] `task shell`

[2] I use 'ts' aliased to `rlwrap -i -r -C task task shell` for this

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flexd
The irony of this is that if I'm busy enough to write todos I never ever see
my desktop anyway. I switch around between open windows, why would I take the
time to check the desktop?

A big yellow old-fashioned post-it will work better. Not everything is better
in digital form.

~~~
nu23
My solution to this problem was to print the todo file whenever a terminal is
opened using .bashrc. It works much better as I see the terminal more often
than the desktop.

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jodrellblank
TODO lists are seen to be useful, in their basic forms they are easy to
program (easy to store, manipulate and display), and they are amenable to much
personalisation and tweaking (desktop! web! mobile sync! embeddable widget!).

But, I wonder if they are an example of H.L. Mencken's quote "For every
complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong."

For evidence supporting this, look how often they are reinvented and
abandoned.

Problems such as ongoing tasks with no quick or clear resolution, teamwork,
not having the todo list with you, putting it somewhere you can't quickly see,
putting pages of things on it, wanting to separate personal tasks and work
tasks (and more), wanting geo-tagged tasks, temptation to push it towards
being a life management system, a calendar, a project manager, a timesheet
system, a reminder system, and a 'what have I accomplished audit'.

What alternatives to TODOs are there? I mean, odd, curious, niche alternatives
that we might not have heard of?

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chmielewski
I used to use paper todo lists until I discovered Calcurse
(<http://www.calcurse.org>). I use a detailed and feature-rich Conky rc on
both my desktop and laptop and _love_ it, but the appointment and calendar
interface that Calcurse adds is indispensable compared to a simple list.

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nyellin
Eh. I use org-mode and all my TODOs are a Cmd+Tab away. So much software is
instantly irrelevant with a persistant Emacs.

~~~
pmr_
org-mode is also software. The difference is just that it runs on Emacs
platform and comes with the default distribution.

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agranig
This is pretty cool, thanks! Setting "double_buffer yes" prevents it from
flickering in Ubuntu.

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SingAlong
There's a rubygem called "j", that does something similar.
<https://github.com/HashNuke/j>

(shameless plug. I wrote it after being inspired by another command-line todo
called "t-")

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asb
I've been using a similarly minimal system for about 10 months now. One
feature I really can't do without is the ability to save completed tasks and
the time they were marked done. I find it very handy to look back over the
past week or so at the todo items I marked off, or even within a single day.

The code for my solution is available here: <https://github.com/asb/sh-todo>

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akeck
Don't forget about Gina Trapani's TodoTxt apps and script at
<http://todotxt.com/>.

I have used my own system since 2007 or so. It amounts to a sortable list of
delineated values where different lines are tagged for tasks, projects, etc. I
posted it at <http://www.texttodo.org>

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kkolev
This thread just reminded me of t - <http://stevelosh.com/projects/t/> \-
which turned out to be rather powerful (if needed) with bash in vi mode.

The simplicity is astounding, although now I'm curious to look at the code...

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minhajuddin
Here is simple yet powerful TODO app for the keyboard lovers/cli users with
features like tagging and repetitive tasks:
<https://github.com/minhajuddin/taskr/tree/dev#readme>

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motters
Taskwarrior. It's all you need.

