I improved the shell code today, It now supports multiple projects/files, with 3 actions available:

- Create a new task in project “prj”: td prj task
- Delete third task: tddone prj 3
- Move third task on the top: tdtop prj 3

Shell script is available here: https://gist.github.com/1611400

######
todotop() {
sed -n “${1}p” ${TODO} > ${TODO}.top
todone ${1}
cat ${TODO} >> ${TODO}.top
mv ${TODO}.top ${TODO}
}
######

*) Don’t hard-code line number. Use ‘cat -b’ to get actual line number.
*) Delete task with sed.

#############
# .bash_profile
export TODO=~/.todo
todo() {
if [ X"$#" == X'0' ]; then
[ -f $TODO ] || touch ${TODO}
cat -b $TODO
else
echo “$@” >> $TODO
fi
}

todone() {
export line=”${1}”
sed “${line}d” ${TODO} > ${TODO}.tmp
mv ${TODO}.tmp ${TODO}
}
#############

> But I really want to keep things as simple and low impedance as possible.

This really is the most critical part. TODO software needs to be as minimal as possible when it comes to the four basic operations: add, done, delete, list. Beyond that, it helps to have automatic installation, man pages if you need them, and tutorials.

Nice article Adrian.

@bitigchi, the post http://blog.jerodsanto.net/2010/12/minimally-awesome-todos/ has the MacOS app which this is a port of. It is very similar, but doesn’t use conky and puts everything in bash functions rather than /usr/local/bin scripts.

@Beetle B, @Aximilation, I’ll check out taskwarrior. But I really want to keep things as simple and low impedance as possible.

elif [ "$1" == "reindex" -a $# == "1" ]; then
i=1
while read line
do
old_index=$(echo “$line” | cut -d ‘ ‘ -f 1)
sed -i “s/$old_index/$i/” “$TODO”
i=$(($i + 1))
done reindex todo
3 -> do it now
5 -> are you still waiting

running “todo reindex” will convert it to
1 -> reindex todo
2 -> do it now
3 -> are you still waiting