Taskdown

About

Taskdown is a simple terminal based application to manage tasks.

Each task is represented by a markdown file in a database directory. Taskdown uses some metadata in a special task section to manage the task. Everything else is just a markdown file you can edit as you like it.

Taskdown was created to manage my tasks at work. It is an experiment to further focus structuring my work using simple markdown files.

Markdown is writen in Kotlin.

Status

This is very much work in progress. We can manage tasks. Currently implemented commands are:

• add - adding a new task
• list - lists tasks (including some filtering)
• show - print a single task to the terminal
• update - change properties of a task
• delete - delete a task
• archive - archive a task

Smaller advanced features are:

• Simple color output
• Creation of backup files

Everything else is missing:

• Tests
• Error handling
• Advanced task properties
• Statistics
• ...

Build

mvn package

builds a jar with dependencies than can be used as 'application binary':

java -jar target/taskdown-jar-with-dependencies.jar list

You need to create a configuration file stating the name of the database and archive directories.

Further installation help on this will follow.

Setup

Taskdown needs a configuration file named taskdown.json

The taskdown.json file is search for at the following places:

OS	Path
Linux	$HOME/.config/taskdown.json
Windows	%HOME%/taskdown.json

The file contains the path to two existing and read/write accessible directories.

{
  "databaseDir": "/home/tim/projects/taskdown/database",
  "archiveDir": "/home/tim/projects/taskdown/archive"
}

Configuration variables

Variable	Description
databaseDir	Directory where the task files (and their backup) are stored
archiveDir	Directory where the archived tasks files are stored

Environment Variables

Taskdown also evaluates the following environment variables:

Variable	Description
VISUAL	Name of the editor to use
EDITOR	Name of the editor to use (fallback)

Attributes of tasks

A task has the following principle attributes:

Attribute	Mandatory	Description
id	x	A small numerical value, the id is unique and stable but might be reused if the task is archived
title	x	A one line descriptive title of the task
priority	x	A priority with one of the following values: A, B, C
tags		A possible empty list of tags. Tags are printed with a leading '#'
creationDate	x	The date and time the task was created
dueDate		The date and time the task should be fulfilled
log		A List of free form log-like one line descriptions with a date and time stamp
body		A descriptive text in markdown syntax

Walk through example

(We are using the td.sh script to call taskdown under Linux for the following examples. Normally you also get nice coloring of the output if the terminal supports it. This is not shown in the examples)

Show the empty database:

./td.sh l

Add a new task with priority A:

./td.sh a -p A "My first task"
  1 A              0 My first task 

The created task is shown. It has the id '1', is 0 days old and has the title 'My first task'.

Show the database again:

./td.sh l                     
  1 A              0 My first task 

Add a tag to the task and change priority to priority B:

./td.sh u -p B -t "zoe" 1
  1 B              0 My first task                            #zoe

Tags can be anything, in this case it is a hint, that we have to speak with Zoe in context of fulfilling the task.

Create another task:

./td.sh a "Another task"  
  2 C              0 Another task

Show the database again:

./td.sh l                     
  1 B              0 My first task                            #zoe
  2 C              0 Another task

As you can see, task a sorted by priority (and age).

Now add a log entry for the first task:

./td.sh log 1 "Spoke with Zoe"
  1 B              0 My first task

Show the task:

 ./td.sh s 1
# My first task

Id:       1
Priority: B
Creation: 13.10.2021
Tags:     #zoe

Logs:

* 13.10.2021, 08:48:30: Spoke with Zoe

Now edit the task:

 ./td.sh e 1 
  1 B              0 My first task  

In turn your editor is called with the database file for the task. It is a simple Markdown file, so you just add a chapter with notes regarding the talk with Zoe.

Show the task:

 ./td.sh s 1
# My first task

Id:       1
Priority: B
Creation: 13.10.2021
Tags:     #zoe

Logs:

* 13.10.2021, 08:48:30: Spoke with Zoe

─────────────────────────── Result of talk with Zoe ───────────────────────────


Do the following:

 • One
 • Two

Search for 'talk':

/td.sh search talk
  1 B              0 My first task

Archive the other task, to remove it from the list of open tasks:

./td.sh archive 2
./td.sh l
  1 B              0 My first task 

Future

Further progress depends on me getting thing done in a better way than before.

License

Apache License 2.0