Show HN: A plain-text file format for todos and check lists

1

Productivity Power Tools

Interesting, I also happen to switched to vscode to manage my notes and todos. I use Todo+ https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=fabiospampinato.vscode-todo-plus for managing my todo list, what I like about todo+ is that it has simple formatting and I'm able to track start and end time of the task, it also has this little counter at the the top of the list to track finish/total tasks.

#Regular Expressions #Programming Tools #Development 356 social mentions

2

Plain Org

You can get quite far with it. I’ve used https://orgmode.org/worg/dev/org-syntax.html when implementing lots of https://plainorg.com and https://flathabits.com.

#Task Management #Note Taking #Project Management 37 social mentions

3

Flat Habits

You can get quite far with it. I’ve used https://orgmode.org/worg/dev/org-syntax.html when implementing lots of https://plainorg.com and https://flathabits.com.

#Habit Tracker #Mobile #Privacy 40 social mentions

4

Todo.txt

There is a todo format that I use daily called todotxt. It has even application support on most platforms or you just write manually in a txt file. Easy to overview by yourself. In combination with Syncthing I have a very seamless experience where ever I go. http://todotxt.org/.

#Task Management #Todos #Project Management 37 social mentions

5

Thymer

#Note Taking #Task Management #Knowledge Management 14 social mentions

6

GitJournal

> A formal spec also doesn't help much for apps to use this format. There is not a huge need for portability between to do apps, and for most users to do items are ephemeral and not something that needs to be archived and revisited. Even if an app adopted this, being tied to a plain text format would likely hinder feature development, including the ability to sync across multiple devices. Beyond that, different to do apps use different systems of categorization and tagging, so really in practice I doubt this will become any kind of standardized format. I disagree. I maintain a rather popular plain-text-based app [1] and the formal spec makes this something very very easy to add support for. Infact the only thing that could make this even easier is if there was a way to verify my own implementation. [1] https://gitjournal.io.

#Note Taking #Personal Notes #Notes 23 social mentions

7

Orgzly

#Note Taking #Task Management #Office & Productivity 14 social mentions

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Orgro

#Note Taking #Task Management #Project Management 13 social mentions

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organice

#Task Management #Project Management #Note Taking 16 social mentions

10

Logseq

#Knowledge Management #Note Taking #Knowledge Base 280 social mentions

11

BrainTool

+1 for plain-text for all the points you mention, particularly "data-first with tools on top". But why reinvent the wheel when the org-mode format is well established and does everything you want, and more? There are an increasing number of tools using org-mode as a plain-text data store, so you are more likely to be able to participate in a tool ecosystem. In addition to my own https://braintool.org see the list below. BrainTool (mainly a bookmark manager) has an elemental to-do system, I'd love to have my users be able to use your tool for todos. NB see also Karl Voit's push for org markup awareness outside of Emacs via Orgdown: https://gitlab.com/publicvoit/orgdown. ------.

#Bookmarks #Chrome Extensions #Information Browser 90 social mentions

12

Syncthing

#Cloud Storage #File Sharing #File Sharing And Backup 826 social mentions

13

Zim Wiki

After having tried many of those, my caveman brain seems to like Zim the most: https://zim-wiki.org/ Plain-text files, simple UI on top, shortcuts for common things. Anything more complex makes me want to spend all my available time on organizing my notes, which ultimately adds very little value to my life. Plaintext files with a fast search utility gets you 97% of the way there. I used to use VSCode for a long time, but ticking checkboxes without a shortcut pushed me to look for an alternative (I know there are extensions for that, but Zim has some other nifty stuff like templates for daily journals etc).

#WiKi #Note Taking #Task Management 115 social mentions