Task Editor Rework

Task Editor Rework

There are many bugs to solve about a task editor. Some of them requires huge changes in code and therefore we want to create a new version of task editor

Related bugs

• Have a link to the parent(s) in the task editor (there is already some code)
• Add tag, due and others via keyboard (like RTM)
• Create subtask with Keyboard (<Tab> may not recommended)
• Tags’ background color should be the tag’s color
• Spell checking in the edit view
• Undo support in the task editor
• Autocomplete for tags (With Tab or C-Enter better according to ploum)
• Delete subtask but arrow left
• Creating a task in the task editor should support the quickadd syntax
• Drag and dropping tasks open in the taskeditor on to tags should refresh the content of the editor
• First line tags mess up the description
• Basic text formatting such as Bold, Italic, Underlined
• In task editor, there are accessibility problems like labels not associated with text edit controls for dates
• gtg_new_task does not support subtasks (needs a split of GTK and parsing part)
• Task with big attribute content causes huge memory uses
• Highlighting tags does not work properly (Tag mis-recognition with ‘)’, ‘,’ or other notation behind)
• Selecting a link opens the link in the browser
• convert selected lines to subtask by clicking the subtask button
• Workflowy mode for task editor (Need more discussion, pure imitation is not elegant.)
• Put into a clipboard also rich text version of copied task description
• Importing dashed lines should create subtasks immediately
• Simpleway how to input a lot of new tasks withing a certain structure
• removing non-existing subtask
• Minimal neweditor size for big toolbars
• Hiding a task editor after canceling delete
• Having a tag in subtask title the task “inherits” tags
• Context menu on an URL should have a “Copy Link Location” command
• tags in subtask subject lines seem to cause problems
• ”-“ + Enter would raise an error in Task Editor
• In-editor search
• User-definable Shortcut Key
• Hidden part of calendar

Format of tag

Note:

• There should be a list of allowned notations in tags which need more discussion.

Definition in Regular Expression (in Python):

• This is deprecated and will revised later.
• re.complie('(?:^|\s)@([^!@\s]\S*)', re.MULTILINE)

What should be a tag:

• @tag
• @google.com
• @M&M should be parsed as @M

What shouldn’t be a tag:

• @@ – it is a part of diff output
• user@mail.com – not e-mail addresses
• @!tag – ‘!’ is reserved for negation of tags, it might interfere with tag completion
• @tag@ should not be a tag.

More specification:

• @should omit the notation at the end of sentence. e.g. “go @home.” should be parsed as “@home” instead of “@home.”

Features summary

• Redesign task structure (This tends to solve a lot of strange bugs)
• Quick add syntax
• Tag auto-completion
• Undo
• Rich text format
• Spell check
• Faster way of adding subtask
• Search for text within a task-editor, and Search for Task using task browser
• User Definable Shortcut Key

To Do List

• make a new structure of a task -> tags, subtasks, bold, italic
• split GTK and parser part (and write intensive tests for parser)
• implement undo & tag completition
• design when to autosave
• respond to modified() signal (auto refresh of a task)
• implement spell check
• design keyboard friendly way how to enter lot of subtasks (including nested subtasks) (something like workflowy mode)
• Disabled Mode (something like launchpad bugs list which is not allowed to edit title and content except for adding and deleting tags.)

Tags removal

• remove tags only from tags line or when there is nothing more than a tag on on the single line
• other reocurrences replace by the name of tag

Example task:

Call @boss @today
@boss

Discuss with my @boss my assignments.

After removing tag @boss

Call boss @today

Discuss with my boss my assignments.

Some Opinions

• Refer to reStructuredText or some other markup language syntax
  • lists (subtask in GTG) start with dash and a space (nest also support)
  • rich text format // \*italic\*, \**blod\**, no underline syntax
• restrict some field value pattern to make it parsed by Regular Expression
  • Example: restrict tag start with @ and only contains letters, numbers or some limited symbol like ‘-‘. // tag_pattern = re.compile(‘@[\w-]+’)
• Vim auto-completion
  • I am used to the raw auto-completion in vim and its display. More discussion needed.

Conclusion

• Suggestions tend to realize features:
  • Redesign task structure
  • Quick add syntax
  • Rich text format
  • Tag auto-completion
• Features remained and some potential reference
  • Spell check
    • Pitijo’s code
    • python-enchant
  • Undo
    • Luca’s code

Interested people

• huxuan
• IzidorMatusov
• Song Yangyu