Start working on the README.
author |
Steve Losh <steve@stevelosh.com> |
date |
Fri, 11 Sep 2009 18:17:16 -0400 |
parents |
(none) |
children |
c31f65f82156 |
-*- markdown -*-
t
=======
`t` is a command line todo list manager for people that want to *finish* tasks, not organize them.
Why t?
------
Yeah, I know, *another* command line todo list manager. Several others already exist ([todo.txt][] and [TaskWarrior][] come to mind), so why make another one?
[todo.txt]: http://ginatrapani.github.com/todo.txt-cli/
[TaskWarrior]: http://taskwarrior.org/projects/show/taskwarrior/
### It Does the Simplest Thing That Could Possibly Work
Todo.txt and TaskWarrior are feature-packed. They let you tag tasks, split them into projects, set priorities, order them, color-code them, and much more.
*That's* the problem. It's easy to say "I'll just organize my todo list a bit" and spend 15 minutes tagging your tasks. In those 15 minutes you probably could have *finished* a couple of them.
`t` was inspired by [j][]. It's simple, has almost no features, messy, and extremely effective at the one thing it does. With `t` the only way to make your todo list prettier is to *finish some damn tasks*.
### It's Flexible
`t`'s simplicity makes it extremely flexible.
Want to edit a bunch of tasks at once? Open the list in a text editor.
Want to view the lists on a computer that doesn't have `t` installed? Open the list in a text editor.
Want to synchronize the list across a couple of computers? Keep your task lists in a [Dropbox][] folder.
Want to use it as a distributed bug tracking system like [BugsEverywhere][]? Make the task list a `bugs` file in the project repository.
[Dropbox]: https://www.getdropbox.com/
[BugsEverywhere]: http://bugseverywhere.org/
### It Plays Nice with Version Control
Other systems keep your tasks in a plain text file. This is a good thing, and `t` follows their lead.
However, some of them append new tasks to the end of the file when you create them. This is not good if you're using a version control system to let more than one person edit a todo list. If two people add a task and then try to merge, they'll get a conflict and have to resolve it manually.
`t` uses random IDs (actually SHA1 hashes) to order the todo list files. Once the list has a couple of tasks in it, adding more is far less likely to cause a merge conflict because the list is sorted.