Sync with Dropbox
Windows mobile, iphone-pad, Android, ... there are too many mOSs to sync to. I take a simpler approach. I output text and html files to Dropbox and pick them up from my various mobile devices. Lowest common denominator. Making this work with fewer steps, and allowing import to TC from Dropbox would be really cool. I can be more detailed if there is enough interest.
Release 1.2.26 of Task Coach supports importing and exporting of Todo.txt files.
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@sttrebo Yes, that is to be expected. The Todo.txt format doesn't support prerequisites out of the box. It's really a very simple format (one line, one task; see http://todotxt.com). However, if you import that exported todo.txt file in your original task file (e.g. after you made a few changes in the Todo.txt file), you will see that Task Coach tries to match the tasks in the Todo.txt file to the original tasks in your task file. Prerequisites will still be there, in the original task file. The main limitation of the matching is that you can't change the task subject in the Todo.txt file because then Task Coach can't match the imported task correctly to the original one (since the subjects will have become different).
In theory, more information from Task Coach tasks (such as prerequisites) could be saved in the Todo.txt file, using "extensions" (see todotxt.com). If you like, you can open a new feature request for having prerequisites in the Todo.txt export.
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sttrebo commented
Hi-
Thanks for your effort on this. couple things I noticed: had a demo task database with 7 or 8 tasks with different task 'prerequisites'. exported to todo.txt format. opened up that file in notepad and saw that all the tasks were on 1 long line. went to imports that same file into a new taskcoach database and i lost all prerequisite info. -
The next release of Task Coach will provide for importing and exporting Todo.txt files. You can get a sneak preview via the prerelease builds available from http://www.fraca7.net/TaskCoach-packages/latest_bugfixes.py, you need revision 4671 or newer.
No special "key" values are used at the moment, so information that is not representable in the vanilla Todo.txt format is not exported (like percentage complete, due date (!), and notes). The hierarchical structure of tasks and categories is retained by writing the complete recursive subject in the Todo.txt file. So a task "Project ABC" with subtask "Prepare report" is exported as two lines:
Project ABC
Project ABC -> Prepare reportPlease let me know what you think.
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I've started working on import from and export to todotxt format.
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T.J. Mueller commented
There are possibilities here. Could you support both export and import, and add your own "key" values to maintain the hierarchical tasks for which TC is famous?
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How about supporting import from the http://todotxt.com format (https://github.com/ginatrapani/todo.txt-cli/wiki/The-Todo.txt-Format)?
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T.J. Mueller commented
This will be long. The problem is there are too many different platforms bobbing around out there, and you guys can't and shouldn't spend your time trying to port TC to all of them. I have two mobile devices, neither one of which you support. And I often can't open my laptop, on which TC resides, for a day or two. So I keep a text file in my Dropbox folder to which I transcribe immediate things to do from TC, and make notes on with my mobile devices as I complete, change or add tasks, and then when I can every few days, transcribe back into TC. Pretty low-tech, but it works.
I see two (or three) ways to improve this situation: 1) Establish a TC website, with accounts like Google calendar or Evernote, and a mobile device format. Don't know if you guys want to get into that. 2) Write the code for such a site and allow individuals to run it on their own servers. That only works for those of us with servers. 3) Make a universal format for lists exported from TC, which is "hand" editable on any device. This probably means TXT, though CSV might be made to work. Then have editing rules which, if correctly followed, will allow TC to import completions, modifications and new tasks automatically. Maybe this is just too kludgy. Maybe I should just stick with my artisan's text file in Dropbox. Ideas anyone?
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You can already put your task file in a dropbox folder and use it from there. Release 1.4 (will take a while, since 1.3 is not out yet) will support synchronization of task files. So you can have multiple Task Coach instances use the same task file. But maybe you're thinking of something else?