Toudou takes your todo-list, cleans it up and fills today's list with items from the past that were not done and with recurring items (e.g. "every Monday").
Toudou has two components:
- a command-line tool;
- an Emacs mode for files with extension
.todo.
The Command-Line Tool takes your todo-list file and updates it.
For instance, running toudou work.todo updates work.todo
(after creating a backup work.todo.bak).
The Emacs mode provides some syntax highlighting, and invokes Toudou on your file everytime you save.
Toudou is not yet in the public opam repository but you can just clone the Toudou repository and install it like this:
opam install .
Then add something like this to your .emacs
(replace SWITCH with the name of your opam switch, e.g. 4.14.0):
(add-to-list 'load-path "~/.opam/SWITCH/share/emacs/site-lisp")
(require 'toudou "toudou" 'noerror)
Alternatively, you can just build the program with:
dune build
Then copy _build/default/main.exe into a directory which is in your $PATH,
with the name toudou.
Then add something like this to your .emacs
(replace PATH with the path to the emacs directory of Toudou,
or to a place where you copied emacs/toudou.el):
(add-to-list 'load-path "PATH")
(require 'toudou "toudou" 'noerror)
Create a new file named home.todo:
- laundry
- (tomorrow) groceries
- (every saturday) find a movie for tonight
- call plumber
Run toudou home.todo (or, if using toudou-mode in Emacs, just save with C-x C-s).
Toudou updates your file as follows (assuming today's date is 2023-06-06):
2023-06-06
- [ ] laundry
- [ ] call plumber
2023-06-07
- groceries
every Saturday from 2023-06-10
- find a movie for tonight
As you can see, Toudou sorted tasks by date, added checkboxes for today's tasks, and added the date at which the recurring task to find a movie shall first occur.
If you now check the "call plumber" task (by writing an x) and run Toudou,
it will put it at the top of today's list:
2023-06-06
- [x] call plumber
- [ ] laundry
2023-06-07
- groceries
every Saturday from 2023-06-10
- find a movie for tonight
Let's assume that one day passed, and we're now 2023-06-07. Run Toudou. The file becomes:
2023-06-06
- [x] call plumber
2023-06-07
- [ ] laundry
- [ ] groceries
every Saturday from 2023-06-10
- find a movie for tonight
As you can see, the laundry task from yesterday was moved to today since it was not done, and the "groceries" task now have a checkbox. Let's mark both tasks as done.
Let's assume that we're now Saturday (2023-06-10). Run Toudou. You get:
2023-06-06
- [x] call plumber
2023-06-07
- [x] laundry
- [x] groceries
2023-06-10
- [ ] find a movie for tonight
every Saturday from 2023-06-17
- find a movie for tonight
As you can see, the recurring task has been duplicated: it has been instantiated
into today's list, and the from annotation has been updated so that Toudou
knows that it should not add the task again next time it runs.
Annotations can be either put in parentheses at the beginning of a task title, or they can be put as section titles for a group of items. There are two kinds of annotations: date annotations, and frequency annotations.
Date annotations can be of the form:
YYYY-MM-DD;MM-DD, denoting the dayDDof monthMMof the current year (if not in the past) or of the next year;DD, denoting the dayDDof the current month (if not in the past) or of the next month;today(ortodfor short);tomorrow(ortomfor short);- days of the week such as
monday(ormonfor short), which denotes the first day after today which is a Monday; next week(equivalent tomonday);next month(equivalent to01);next year(equivalent to01-01);later(an unspecified date that is not today).
Frequency annotations are used to specify recurring items and can be:
daily;- weekly:
every monday(orevery monfor short),every tuesday, etc.; - monthly:
every DD, i.e. everyDDday of the month; - yearly:
every MM-DD, i.e. everyMM-DDday of the year.