GTD Task List Manager

Summary: An experimental JavaScript GTD task/todo list manager

Version: 20150405

Prerequisites: PmWiki 2.2.58 or newer

Status: experimental

Maintainer: Petko

Discussion: GTD-TLM-Talk

Users: +1 -1

License: GPL3+

Description

An experimental JavaScript GTD task/todo list manager.

I use PmWiki to store all sorts of information: notes, links, project outlines, calendar reminders. I want to also have a simple but versatile todo/task list manager, inspired by the GTD technique by David Allen.

Preview / Test / Demo.

The main differences between GTD-TLM and the other PmWiki todo managers are:

the main program is written in JavaScript 1.2:
- it runs mainly in your browser instead of on the server,
- lightning fast to add, modify, delete, filter and search tasks, as this is done in the memory of your browser,
- some task updates or searches can be done with a single mouse click,
- you can make many changes, and save them at once to a PmWiki data page at the end of your session,
- a PmWiki page is only used as a data storage for the list of tasks,
- the program may not work in very old browsers (pre-2000), or in stripped-down ones (on some mobile phones),
- JavaScript needs to be enabled in your browser, at least for your own website where you install GTD-TLM,
GTD-TLM tries to closely follow the GTD method: with "Next actions", "Waiting for", "Some day/Maybe", "Done", implementing @Contexts and $Projects, and priorities,
start up display (filter, search, status) can be selected, or GTD-TLM can display all the tasks,
your data is stored in a simple plain text format, you can easily retrieve/change/search it even with other tools.

Installation

Copy the file gtd-tlm.php Δ to your /cookbook/ directory.
Copy the file gtd-tlm.js Δ to your /pub/ directory (strip the .txt extention).
Add such a line to your config.php or to a per group / page customization file:

 include_once("$FarmD/cookbook/gtd-tlm.php");

Add this CSS code to your /pub/css/local.css file (you can adapt it for your needs):

/** GTD Task List Manager */
select.gtd, input.gtd, textarea.gtd{
  border: 1px solid #888888; margin: .2em; font-family: sans-serif; }
select.gtd option { border-bottom: 1px solid #eeeeee; }
option.next, label.next { color: black; }
option.done, label.done { color: #cccccc; }
option.waitingfor, label.waitingfor { color: orange; }
option.ref, label.ref { color: #888 ; }
option.maybe, label.maybe { color: green; }
label b, .kbd { border: 1px solid #ddd; background-color: #fafafa;
  padding: 1px 2px; margin: 1px; font-family: monospace; color:black; }
select.itemlist, textarea.cmdline, input.cmdline { width: 480px; }
select.taglist { width: 120px; }

Usage

In a wiki page where you want your list manager form to be, add just (:gtd-tlm:).

Your main tool is the command line on top. (See the screenshot above.)
"Tasks" are shown in the wide listbox.
"Tags" (contexts, projects) are in the narrow listbox on the left. Contexts are keywords preceded by "@", projects are keywords preceded by "$".
"Task status" categories are the checkboxes below.
At the bottom, the "Save changes" button: press it to store your task list to PmWiki.

Adding a task. Write in the command line text field "+" and the task description:

 + something I need to do @home

and press "Enter". The task will be placed on top of your task list.

Task status. A task entry can have any text or tag you like; it is very easy to find any task by searching for a word it contains. However, the first character of the task line indicates its status:

"!", the task is with "Top or High Priority",
";", the task is marked "Waiting For",
"?", the task is set for "Some day/Maybe",
".", the task is "Done",
":", the item is for "reference", requires no action
in any other case, the task is a "Next Action".

You can change the status of a task by right-click or Shift+click on it a couple of times.

You can display tasks with only some of the statuses, by (un)checking the checkboxes below.

Modifying a task. Select a task, then write in the command line text field "=" and the new task description:

 = modified task content

and press "Enter". The selected task will be modified. To delete a task, use just "=".

You can middle-click or Ctrl+click on a task to copy it to the command line, this is very handy if you want to just add/remove a word or a tag.

Searching for tasks. Write in the command line :

 ? search terms -exclude

and press "Enter". The list will be filtered to show only tasks containing all the search terms. To exclude some terms, use "-" in front of them: only tasks without them will be shown.

Tag list. The tag list to the right contains @contexts and $projects that are present in your tasks.

If you double-click on a tag, the task list will be filtered to only show tasks containing this tag.
If you right-click of Shift+click on a tag, the task list will show all tasks.
If you middle-click of Ctrl+click on a tag, the tag will be appended to the command line.

Command line. The command line recognizes the following commands (followed by Enter):

"? keyword" : search/filter tasks (memo: question = query). Use "?" to list all tasks.
"+ task" : add a new task (memo: plus = addition)
"* @home" : AUTOAPPEND mode, will automatically add "@home" to every next task you add. You can quickly add multiple tasks with the same keywords, without typing them all. (memo: * = multiplication) To cancel the AUTOAPPEND mode, use just "*".
"= task" : to completely change the selected task, or just "=" to delete it.
You can double-click in the command line to clear it.

Configuration

The program is quite customizable: (:gtd-tlm parameters:) where the optional parameters can be:

datapage=Group.Name the wiki page where your task list is stored; if not set, will use a page "$FullName-gtddata" ($FullName is your current page). You need to have read permissions to see/filter/search your tasks, and write permissions to change them.
lines=20 the number of lines in the task list box; default is 10, but if you have a big screen, a bigger list box may be more comfortable. To make the lists larger, change the CSS file.
clines=4 the number of lines in the command line (default is 2).
readonly=1 to remove the "Save changes" button.
quickref=0 to remove the quick reference below the form.

To select which tasks should be shown on startup, use either one:

done=0 maybe=0 ref=0 waitingfor=0 top=0 next=0 to exclude tasks with these statuses. These parameters control the status checkboxes below the form, setting them to "0" means the checkboxes will be unchecked on startup.
startup="@home -garage" set a search to be executed at startup time (like in the "?" command line).

Notes

Terminology:

"left-click" or just "click" means you press down and release with your main (left) mouse button,
"right-click" means you click with your right mouse button,
"middle-click" means you click with your middle mouse button (or on the wheel),
"Shift+click" and "Ctrl+click" means you press down the "Shift" or the "Ctrl" key on your keyboard, "left-click", then release the "Ctrl" key,
"double-click" means you left-click twice (quickly),
a "selected list item" means you "clicked" on it, and its appearance changed, usually to a dark blue background color.

In some cases, on some browsers or computers, you cannot "middle-click" on a task, hence the "Ctrl+click" command which does the same. Same for "right-click"="Shift+click".

On some browsers, the tasks will not be colored; you can use the free Mozilla Firefox browser if you really need colored tasks.

The recipe is developed with the latest PmWiki 2.2 beta series; it uses UpdatePage() and will not work with versions older than 2.2.0-beta12 (which was published 2006-10-03).

The recipe should also work in UTF-8.

Release Notes

20150405 Fixes for PHP 5.5. The recipe now requires PmWiki 2.2.58 or more recent.
20081124 Fixed a bug which cleared the datapage history.
20080710 Changed javascript search location from $PubDirUrl to $FarmPubDirUrl (suggested by chr).
20080615a Changed the tag list to filter tasks on double-click and not on single left-click.
20080615 Larger command line by default, added clines=, modified layout and CSS, added "%" command line.
20080614 First public release.

Author

This program is written for PmWiki by Petko.

Comments

Please add your comments at GTD-TLM-Talk.

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