
The Todo.txt Command Line Interface (CLI) - mlLK
http://ginatrapani.github.com/todo.txt-cli/
======
jamesbritt
Raise your hand if you've written you own version of this at least once.

This looks quite slick (though it's sort of ironic that a non-GUI, text-based
tool does not have a simple text-based description; I skipped most of the
video).

I wrote my own CLI note taker (aliased to '@'), have a Ruby app that interacts
with Todoist.com via the CLI; have CLI tools for setting reminders to ping me
via Twitter; am starting on one to manage issues on GitHub repos via the CLI.

They're all fairly simple and designed around the principle of WFJ: Works for
James. And I've always believed that I'm not alone in hacking out little
helper tools like this.

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yangyang
A _3 minute_ screencast for a simple commandline tool? What's wrong with an
annotated transcript?

~~~
almost
I'm not really a fan of screencasts but in this case I thought it gave a nice
idea of what the tool feels like to use. That's pretty important with
something like that, but a little hard to convey through just a transcript.

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Estragon
Enh. I'll stick with org-mode. I always have a text editor up, anyway.

~~~
Semiapies
This does seem aimed more at heavy shell-users. I've heard of people finding
little at-hand shell windows useful, but my workflow is all about the editor.

(Incidentally, I'd just recently started learning emacs and hadn't heard of
org-mode before your comment. Thanks - seems useful so far.)

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live_to_code
This is pretty cool. I've been using a textfile for todo lists for a while,
but the video tutorial really blew me away.

EDIT: This is really the type of stuff I'd love to see more on
news.ycombinator.com -- tools to make me more efficient.

~~~
access_denied
[http://ntbk.wordpress.com/2008/07/08/textmode-based-
personal...](http://ntbk.wordpress.com/2008/07/08/textmode-based-personal-
information-management/)

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tjweir
I've taken a shine to TaskWarrior,
<http://taskwarrior.org/projects/show/taskwarrior/>

Here's a 30-second intro:
<http://taskwarrior.org/wiki/taskwarrior/30-second_Tutorial>

And a more comprehensive display of abilities:
<http://taskwarrior.org/wiki/taskwarrior/Simple>

And combined with GeekTool, I've got a list on my desktop at all times.
<http://projects.tynsoe.org/en/geektool/>

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cldwalker
seems that most of the functionality here can be replicated with basic shell
commands: t add "blah" == echo "blah" >> Todo.txt t ls @search == grep @search
Todo.txt

so all this does is ... color-code task priorities - meh

~~~
almost
That's what shell scripts do in general, they automate things you could have
done yourself with a bit more typing. With a todo list I feel it is absolutely
vital that there is as little friction as possible. You don't want the process
of recording and tracking what you have to do to distract you from actually
doing it!

Plus how long would it take _you_ to accidentally type "echo blah > todo.txt"
instead of "echo blah >> todo.txt". I'm thinking a few days for me :)

This is all academic of course, everyone should be using org-mode for todo
lists. What do you mean you don't have Emacs running all the time?? ;)

~~~
cldwalker
Agree with the generalization. But from the screencast, there is no indication
this does anything other than alias basic shell commands. I'd recommend the
author screencast something that the average shell user won't look at and
wonder why even bother. At least the source code reveals something a little
more useful.

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PStamatiou
I use etherpad for my to do lists. I used to use "Things.app" on my mac but I
found that had too many features I just didn't use, and I couldn't access it
online/elsewhere.

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christopherolah
echo "todo note" >> todo.txt vw todo.txt where vw is an alias for less.

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pwmanagerdied
I thought this was satire at first.

