[TW5] Plugins updated: Reminders and Alerts for ToDoNow

[Thomas Elmiger]

Hi all

Finally I am ready to officially release a new update and additional extensions for my GTD solution called ToDoNow.

TL;DR

• The biggest innovation is a new plugin called Reminders that can show alerts and reminders for tasks with a deadline.
  
• Many other things have been improved, simplified or added as options.
• All useful combinations of plugins are available as Bundles now, kudos to Mario and Josiah for this great invention!
  

New in Version 1.0.7

• New Addon: Outlook
  • Outlook shows tasks for today/tomorrow/next 7 days – comes with translations en, de, dk
• Support for new/updated Plugins
  • Reminders: I built a new plugin for this, in theory it could be used for any deadline fields with TW dates in them … 
  • Datepicker 0.5.2 and moments.js (info) 2.18.1 by kixam
  • Checklist by Tony Grosinger in the great new version 0.0.14
    • hint: use tab and space bar to navigate, activate and delete subtasks
• Download options
  • Bundles for simple to sophisticated solutions (see sidebar, Bundles tab) – download as JSON, throw on your wiki, reload
    
  • Demo/download page for the complete solution: https://tid.li/tw5/tdn.html (kind of an edition)
    
• Plugin info: new tabs for configuration and usage
• Danish translation by Birthe – thank you!
• Documentation update
• and possibly other cool features I forgot to list here

As allways: Be sure to have a backup ready before you try this, even if it’s working flawless for me and other testers.
If you update from a prior version you might have to delete local copies of shadow tiddlers. Update all plugins!

Found a bug or a feature? Please report here! – There is still potential in many details, I hope some of you (again) will help me to dig it up.

And last but not least: A special thank you to my power user Josiah – some of your hints are still on my personal todo list.

Happy Do-ing!

Thomas

[Mark S.]

Very impressive!

It appears that the button for the custom filter has disappeared.

Also appears (haven't tested in detail) that if the tab for the page isn't opened when a timer triggers, that it won't open when you return to the tab.

Mark

[Thomas Elmiger]

Hi Mark

Very impressive!

 

Thank you!

It appears that the button for the custom filter has disappeared.

You are right. I will try to reactivate it.

Also appears (haven't tested in detail) that if the tab for the page isn't opened when a timer triggers, that it won't open when you return to the tab.

In fact there is no timer running in the background. Reminders and alerts apear when TW re-renders the page, so you have to be active – e.g. switch a tab, use the search field or interact with the wiki in any other way. So TW usage is the trigger.

[@TiddlyTweeter]

Ciao readers ...

I think Thomas has made with the listreveal / ToDoNow combo more than an app--its a really good instance of an INTERFACE. Even if the To Do's are not your thing its worth looking at. Its rich, yet still intuitively easy to use.

I think the mechanism could be used as a BLUEPRINT for lots of Apps.

I'm considering using it as a model for an interface for writing Screenplays.

Best wishes
Josiah

[@TiddlyTweeter]

Ciao Thomas

A few comments, some suggestions & a minor bug note ...

COMMENTS

"Alarms" -- Worked seamlessly for me. I been using it over a month. Very good. No issues. Incredibly useful.

Because I close the TW every night, the next morning on opening I see alerts for everything urgent I need to.

Outlook -- Neat feature. Helps orientate. Minimal footprint. Its practically very useful to me when I get in a mess with my schedule and need to quickly see what I need to put right.


SUGGESTIONS

Date Display -- Not sure if its possible but I don't read dates well in the format "2017-09-07". Any chance of the display format: day: date: mon: year? E.g. like this (in English) ...

Mon 7 Sep 17

Alarm Time Display? -- At the moment you have to hover on an alarm to see the time setting. I'd find it more useful if the time of an alarm, once set, was displayed. E.g. like this ...

17:45

The point is that its a deadline. Once you move it to the ToDoNow section I'd like it displayed because on that one day you may have, for instance, 3 deadlines. Its important to be able to see them in that context.

NOTE: I personally do NOT need alarm times showing in the ToDo or ToDoDone sections.

Spacing -- Whilst ToDoNow is minimalist in design I think you are sometimes over generous with spacing ... Like this that occurs between sections... Could it be tightened?



Create / Edit in Popup or modal? -- I may have suggested this before. Since ToDoNow is not just an app, its an INTERFACE, I'm wondering IF when you invoke the full editor it can be in a POPUP or MODAL.

The point is that IF you go the normal route to creating a Tiddler then it breaks the visual minimalism of the interface. Since ALL Tiddlers created through the ToDoNow interface immediately appear in the ToDoNow interface leaving them on screen as independent Tiddlers is redundant.

I guess an easier way than coding for pop-ups might be to enforce only the SAVE & CLOSE button on all Tiddler creation / edits (which you recently worked on). That would be a workable solution too.


BUGS?

Only thing I found so far ... that Mark S. commented already on is that the "User Filter" is missing on the page even though it can be configured ...

Thank you for an absolutely brilliant piece of work.

Best wishes
Josiah

[Thomas Elmiger]

Hello early adopters ;–)

There is an update for you:

Version 1.0.8

• User filters are back – better than ever!
• Configuration info update – how to translate/adjust date and time formats (it’s meant to be easy – let me know if you need help)
  

Both https://tid.li/tw5/tdn.html and https://tid.li/tw5/plugins.html are up to date.

Thanks, good night & all the best!

Thomas

[Mark S.]

Thanks Thomas!

As a thought for future implementations, perhaps consider offering a drop-down list of custom filters.

I'm wondering, did you develop or find any date comparison filters in your application? That is, is there any way to make a filter that will compare dates, and show/hide certain tiddlers based on dates?

On another topic, I'm wondering how (or if) people are implementing GTD concepts. In particular, if projects are just tagged tiddlers, how does anyone implement the GTD idea of a next action?

That is, if there are multiple tiddlers associated with a Project/Tag, how is one particular one made the focus of attention?

Thanks!

Mark

On Thursday, September 7, 2017 at 12:26:07 PM UTC-7, Thomas Elmiger wrote:

[Thomas Elmiger]

Hi Mark, thanks for your thoughts!

My comments on these:

As a thought for future implementations, perhaps consider offering a drop-down list of custom filters.

The user-filter functionality is meant to cover basic needs of advanced users. I have no plans on expanding this feature any further because advanced users could do that themselves ;–)

As an alternative you could use the filter tab of the TW advanced search – I think it has an expandable list of filters.

I'm wondering, did you develop or find any date comparison filters in your application? That is, is there any way to make a filter that will compare dates, and show/hide certain tiddlers based on dates?

There is the days filter operator (see tiddlywiki.com), I use it for my Outlook functionality that shows tasks for today/tomorrow/next 7 days. It selects time periods starting from today. So to select not this week (next 7 days) but next week (+8 up to +14 days) you would use:

+[days:todo-deadline[14]!days:todo-deadline[8]]

I will add this to my filter examples and I made a pull request to optimise the docs and example of this feature on tiddlywiki.com.

On another topic, I'm wondering how (or if) people are implementing GTD concepts. In particular, if projects are just tagged tiddlers, how does anyone implement the GTD idea of a next action?

That is, if there are multiple tiddlers associated with a Project/Tag, how is one particular one made the focus of attention?

I have to admit that I have never read a book on GTD concepts, I started to call my solution a GTD thing after seeing users refer to it using this term. It might not be correct in the sense of the original GTD system.
On the web I found differing interpretations/tips on the subject of next action. One was about processing tasks until they are ready to do – I think my flexible priorities would be one possibility to manage this, e.g. you could define a priority "W" (needs work) and use numbers to prioritize tasks that are ready. Would that answer your question?
Another article was about organizing stuff to put them under different domains (@home, @office, …) or projects. As you say I use tags for projects. For the domains I use different lists (in separate wikis).
If I missed a concept of next action please let me know!

Have a nice sunday!
Thomas

(Edit in filter example 7 => 8)

[Thomas Elmiger]

Ciao Josiah, thanks for your detailed feeback!

Here some thougts from my side:

SUGGESTIONS

Date Display -- Not sure if its possible but I don't read dates well in the format "2017-09-07". Any chance of the display format: day: date: mon: year? E.g. like this (in English)

I hope the new explanations on the configuration tab will help you to create your own "language" with your desired formatting.

Alarm Time Display? -- At the moment you have to hover on an alarm to see the time setting. I'd find it more useful if the time of an alarm, once set, was displayed. E.g. like this ...

17:45

Is it correct you would like to see this on alerts/reminders directly? (Will consider this for next update.)

The point is that its a deadline. Once you move it to the ToDoNow section I'd like it displayed because on that one day you may have, for instance, 3 deadlines. Its important to be able to see them in that context.

You should only have one single item in the …Now section ;–)

If you sort the list below according to deadlines the other tasks for the day should stay in context. Or you can dispay them in the "today" outlook list.

Spacing -- Whilst ToDoNow is minimalist in design I think you are sometimes over generous with spacing ... Like this that occurs between sections... Could it be tightened?

I will have a look at this for the next release – I am not a designer though.

Create / Edit in Popup or modal? -- I may have suggested this before. Since ToDoNow is not just an app, its an INTERFACE, I'm wondering IF when you invoke the full editor it can be in a POPUP or MODAL.

You have suggested this before :) I will try the DoneClose way first.

Keep the feedback coming, even if I am slow processing it!

All the best,

-t

[@TiddlyTweeter]

Ciao Thomas

DATE DISPLAY

Josiah:

Date Display -- Not sure if its possible but I don't read dates well in the format "2017-09-07". Any chance of the display format: day: date: mon: year? E.g. like this (in English)

Thomas:

I hope the new explanations on the configuration tab will help you to create your own "language" with your desired formatting.

That's excellent and was EASY. Till looking at those tiddlers I had not realised you could configure so much through the "language" packs.

Its perhaps worth mentioning that configurability more upfront.

DEADLINE TIME DISPLAY IN TODONOW SECTION

Josiah:

Alarm Time Display? -- At the moment you have to hover on an alarm to see the time setting. I'd find it more useful if the time of an alarm, once set, was displayed. E.g. like this ...17:45

Thomas:

Is it correct you would like to see this on alerts/reminders directly? (Will consider this for next update.)

 

You should only have one single item in the …Now section ;–)

FYI, it often happens to me that I have 2 or three deadlines to meet ON THE SAME DAY. I don't think that is so unusual :-).

I have to know what is at 14:30 and what is at 15:32. Its not JUST the order that matters. Its that I need to SEE the  time deadline--so I can mentally calculate "I have 45 minutes to finish this ..." (Before I light another cigarette :-)

I'd like to see times in the ToDoNow section like THIS where an Alarm is set ...

[ ]  TITLE                  15:32 Sun 10 Sep 17 (Stopwatch) (Priority) etc

Hope this is clear.

Tchüss
Josiah

[@TiddlyTweeter]

Ciao Thomas

SUGGESTIONS ON APPEARANCE

1 - Option To Hide The Head Area: In line with idea its an INTERFACE ... Could there be a User Config Option to "Hide the Header" ... what I mean is that at the moment on my ToDo Now its head looks like this ...

But I'd prefer it looked like this, without the header ...

2 - Background Colour On Outlook: IMO this would look better if the background colour for the items themselves were also YELLOW. That would also make it consistent. so ...

- White background ToDo
- Grey background ToDoNow.
- Yellow background Outlook.

Right now it looks like this ...

Tchüss
Josiah

[@TiddlyTweeter]

Ciao Thomas

SUGGESTION - GO ALL THE WAY WITH "LANGUAGE" TIDDLERS?

I noticed that some parts of ToDoNow have HARD-CODED ENGLISH ... section titles for instance, and a couple of slogans.

Given that you have already modularised language well would it not be better that ALL language use was modularised?

It also has the advantage that a user like me could customise a new "language" tiddler so that on upgrades I no longer have to manually hack the interface to get it looking as I need :-).

I'll shut-up after this for a bit :-)

Tchüss
Josiah

[Thomas Elmiger]

Well, you are absolutely right, Josiah. 

I think I will put this on my (very long) list (with high priority though) and work in that direction during the next revisions. 

All the best!

Thomas 

@TiddlyTweeter <tiddly...@assays.tv> schrieb am Mo. 11. Sep. 2017 um 11:31:

Ciao Thomas

SUGGESTION - GO ALL THE WAY WITH "LANGUAGE" TIDDLERS?

I noticed that some parts of ToDoNow have HARD-CODED ENGLISH ... section titles for instance, and a couple of slogans.

Given that you have already have modularised language well would it not be better that ALL language use was modularised?

It also has the advantage that a user like me could customise a new "language" tiddler so that on upgrades I no longer have to manually hack the interface to get it looking as I need :-).

I'll shut-up after this for a bit :-)

Tchüss
Josiah

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Thomas Elmiger

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[Mark S.]

My Todo is majorly broken at the moment. See the image. This happened once when I first started but I thought I had just configured items out of order. Now I'm thinking it has something to do with the way deadlines are saved and/or recorded.

Suggestions?
Mark

[Mark S.]

The problem disappeared when I removed a deadline on one of my items. But I suspect the problem relates to calculating deadlines and will likely return under the right (e.g. wrong) conditions.

Thanks,
Mark

[Thomas Elmiger]

Hi Mark, any details about the date? Far in the future or in the past? Hour set or only date? 

I will change date calculations from my rather hacky first attempt to a better system sooner or later. But for the moment more details would be helpful because I have not encountered something similar lately. 

-t

Mark wrote:

The problem disappeared when I removed a deadline on one of my items. But I suspect the problem relates to calculating deadlines and will likely return under the right (e.g. wrong) conditions.

[@TiddlyTweeter]

Thomas & Mark S.

FWIW, I never ever had anything like that happen over months of usage.

Was I under the delusion that Thomas had solved all problems already :-).

Mark: Its likely a specific combo? Can you replicate do you think?

Interested.
Josiah

[Mark S.]

I was able to reproduce it on your original. It has to do partially with an apostrophe in the text.

Change "Compare Files Sizes" to "Compare File's Sizes"

Move the item down to "waiting"

Change the date stamp to today.

The error will occur. If you have a draft of the problematic tiddler open, then you will get two error sets. If you change the deadline to a future date, the error will disappear again.

HTH
Mark

[Thomas Elmiger]

Thanks, Mark, that's helpful!
-t

[@TiddlyTweeter]

Ciao Mark S.

I am in awe of your programming, debugging & analytic skills. I would not want to meet you on a frosty night in Huddersfield to discuss either foo or bar.

Do you have time for a day job too? :-)

Interested,
Josiah

[Thomas Elmiger]

O.k. Workaround first: You can
Compare File’s Sizes
while I am hunting the bug.

Happy apostrophing
-t

[Thomas Elmiger]

Hi Mark

Thanks for breaking my stuff – this led to a new and better version, hardened against single quote attacks.

Quotes – single ' and double " – can be used in task titles now (do not put " at the end though)
hint: a prime ′ is not a straight-apostrophe ' or a printer's apostrophe ’

• listreveal updated to version 0.2.1
• reminders updated to version 0.1.4

Both https://tid.li/tw5/tdn.html and https://tid.li/tw5/plugins.html are up to date.

Happy quoting,
Thomas

[Mark S.]

I was trying out the trick to use the access key (letter S) to do the save. Unfortunately it doesn't work in ToDoNow. I'm guessing one of the many plugins is blocking that access key or the save. Would you happen to know which one might interfere with key assignment or saving?

Thanks!
Mark

[Thomas Elmiger]

Hi Mark

Could you supply additional information please?
– operating system
– browser
– exact key combination (? + s)
– plugins installed

Thank you
Thomas

[Mark S.]

Hi Thomas,

Windows 7, Firefox 56 (64 bit)
Plugins: All the ones from TodoNow plus a couple others:

$:/plugins/ahahn/tinka

$:/plugins/bj/tiddlyclip

$:/plugins/kixam/datepicker

$:/plugins/kixam/moment

$:/plugins/telmiger/Clipboard

$:/plugins/telmiger/details

$:/plugins/telmiger/EditorCounter

$:/plugins/telmiger/EditorCounter-0.3.1-backup

$:/plugins/telmiger/listreveal

$:/plugins/telmiger/listreveal-0.1.7-backup

$:/plugins/telmiger/reminders

$:/plugins/telmiger/rpn

$:/plugins/telmiger/todonow

$:/plugins/telmiger/todonow-0.9.8-backup

$:/plugins/telmiger/todonow-1.0.1-backup

$:/plugins/telmiger/todonow/outlook

$:/plugins/tgrosinger/tw5-checklist

$:/plugins/tobibeer/split 

The technique I'm referring to is here: https://groups.google.com/d/msg/tiddlywiki/OJQ0yRq4zog/DqCXRmWxAgAJ

The key stroke I'm using is accesskey "s" which maps to alt-shift-S on Windows.

Thanks!

Mark

[Thomas Elmiger]

Hi Mark

In fact it is ToDoNow that breaks the accesskey functionality. According to https://dequeuniversity.com/rules/axe/1.1/accesskeys accesskey codes must be unique on the page. This is not the case when you have ToDoNow open - it comes with two save buttons that are identical with the standard save button in the right side bar. Obviously if you have three buttons using accesskey s, Firefox activates none of them, even if they are identical.

So the solution for you would be to remove unused buttons or build your own and only add the accesskey to this (your own) version. (You can close ToDoNow and possibly other tiddlers with save buttons in them, but leave the side bar open. Then the accesskey works.)

Good luck!
Thomas

[Mark S.]

Thanks Thomas,

I think I'll start by removing the small save buttons and see how that goes.

Mark