todotxt-machine

todotxt-machine is an interactive terminal based todo.txt file editor with an interface similar to mutt. It follows the todo.txt format and stores todo items in plain text.

In Action

Features

• View your todos in a list with helpful syntax highlighting
• Archive completed todos
• Define your own colorschemes
• Tab completion of contexts and projects
• Filter contexts and projects
• Search for the todos you want with fuzzy matching
• Sort in ascending or descending order, or keep things unsorted
• Clickable UI elements

Requirements

Python 2.7 or Python 3.4 on Linux or Mac OS X.

todotxt-machine 1.1.8 and earlier drew its user interface using only raw terminal escape sequences. While this was very educational it was difficult to extend with new features. Version 2 and up uses urwid to draw its interface and is much more easily extendable.

Installation

Using pip

pip install todotxt-machine

Manually

Download or clone this repo and run the todotxt-machine.py script.

git clone https://github.com/AnthonyDiGirolamo/todotxt-machine.git
cd todotxt-machine
./todotxt-machine.py

Command Line Options

todotxt-machine

Usage:
  todotxt-machine
  todotxt-machine TODOFILE [DONEFILE]
  todotxt-machine [--config FILE]
  todotxt-machine (-h | --help)
  todotxt-machine --version
  todotxt-machine --show-default-bindings

Options:
  -c FILE --config=FILE               Path to your todotxt-machine configuraton file [default: ~/.todotxt-machinerc]
  -h --help                           Show this screen.
  --version                           Show version.
  --show-default-bindings             Show default keybindings in config parser format
                                      Add this to your config file and edit to customize

Config File

You can tell todotxt-machine to use the same todo.txt file whenever it starts up by adding a file entry to the ~/.todotxt-machinerc file. If you want to archive completed tasks, you can specify a done.txt file using an archive entry. You can also set you preferred colorscheme or even define new themes. Here is a short example:

[settings]
file = ~/todo.txt
archive = ~/done.txt
auto-save = True
show-toolbar = False
show-filter-panel = False
enable-borders = False
enable-word-wrap = True
colorscheme = myawesometheme

Color Schemes

todotxt-machine currently supports solarized and base16 colors.

Pictured above are the following themes from left to right:

• base16-light
• base16-dark
• solarized-light
• solarized-dark

Here is a config file with a complete colorscheme definition:

[settings]
file = ~/todo.txt
colorscheme = myawesometheme

[colorscheme-myawesometheme]
plain=h250
selected=,h238
header=h250,h235
header_todo_count=h39,h235
header_todo_pending_count=h228,h235
header_todo_done_count=h156,h235
header_file=h48,h235
dialog_background=,h248
dialog_color=,h240
dialog_shadow=,h238
footer=h39,h235
search_match=h222,h235
completed=h59
context=h39
project=h214
creation_date=h135
due_date=h161
priority_a=h167
priority_b=h173
priority_c=h185
priority_d=h77
priority_e=h80
priority_f=h62

You can add colorschemes by adding sections with names that start with colorscheme-. Then under the [settings] section you can say which colorscheme you want to use.

The format for a color definitions is:

name=foreground,background

Foreground and background colors are follow the 256 color formats defined by urwid. Here is an excerpt from that link:

High colors may be specified by their index h0, ..., h255 or with the shortcuts for the color cube #000, #006, #008, ..., #fff or gray scale entries g0 (black from color cube) , g3, g7, ... g100 (white from color cube).

You can see all the colors defined here.

I recommend you leave the foreground out of the following definitions by adding a comma immediately after the =

selected=,h238
dialog_background=,h248
dialog_color=,h240
dialog_shadow=,h238

If you want to use your terminal's default foreground and background color use blank strings and keep the comma:

dialog_background=,

Let me know if you make any good colorschemes and I'll add it to the default collection.

Key Bindings

You can customize any key binding by adding a setting to the [keys] section of your config file ~/.todotxt-machinerc.

For a list of the default key bindings run:

todotxt-machine --show-default-bindings

You can easily append this to your config file by running:

todotxt-machine --show-default-bindings >> ~/.todotxt-machinerc

When you edit a key binding the in app help will reflect it. Hit h or ? to view the help.

Known Issues

OSX

• On Mac OS hitting ctrl-y suspends the application. Run stty dsusp undef to fix.
• Mouse interaction doesn't seem to work properly in the Apple Terminal. I would recommend using iTerm2 or rxvt / xterm in XQuartz.

Tmux

• With tmux the background color in todotxt-machine can sometimes be lost at the end of a line. If this is happening to you set your $TERM variable to screen or screen-256color

  export TERM=screen-256color

Planned Features

• User defined color themes
• Manual reordering of todo items
• Config file for setting colors and todo.txt file location
• Support for archiving todos in done.txt
• Custom keybindings
• Add vi readline keybindings. urwid doesn't support readline currently. The emacs style bindings currently available are emulated.

Updates

See the log here