Task tracking for nerds | Hacker News Reader

Task tracking for nerds

hollyapp.com

128 pointstfjgeorge74 comments

First of all, congrats on building and releasing something!

Now a few pointers.

The workflow isn't flowing. I know the whole idea revolves around managing tasks as text, but unless you fit vim into a text area the app won't fly.

Another idea would be to ditch the concept entirely and add edit in place. Your app would work similarly to omny outline. Two direct results of this approach would be a better workflow and more users due to easy of use.

This last pointer is more of personal taste. Rarely brown goes well with technology (remember the brow Zune?). I'd use one of the Solarized color schemes, dark would be my choice.

Other than that, keep it up coding and shipping! :)

Since this app is inherently modal (you can only enter text when you're in an input field), it seems like a huge missed opportunity that it doesn't have VIM-style modal keybindings. Especially because it advertises it self as being for the text-editor set.

I will say that their no-signup approach to getting you into the app is pretty great.

I agree, the first thing I did was to start typing vim commands just to see letters on the screen.

Frankly I'm glad it's not bound to VIM — that app is already restrictive in scope to those who prefer text-editing, let alone VIM users.

Thanks for a great little application!

Restrictive in scope? Enable the mouse, press i and as long as you don't press escape it will be the simplest text editor you could want.

You're right! Why complicate things by saving?

For the record, I meant key combos that don't use modifiers unnecessarily, similar to GMails, where for example, just pressing “u” goes to your inbox. Modifier keys aren't necessary with modal interfaces.

Of course, at that point, basing your modifier keys on VIM just makes sense :).

Funnily enough, I thought a missed opportunity was using emacs' Org-mode syntax, or at the very least exporting to it.

Yup, equally valid point. Org-mode is very frequently mentioned as the hacker's todo list.

(apologize if that's not the correct characterization, but I am agreeing with you :) )

I was missing the multiple cursors from Sublime...

On a sidenote: Isn't it somehow funny, how the top comments on every article that remotely touches text mode or editors is an editor war? ;o)

More like an editor truce this time.

As long as it lasts, I concur: having built-in export/import to existing popular solutions would be very helpful.

Re: no-signup approach

I really like the fast start, but I would MUCH prefer them to allow me to give them some login info (maybe even just Google login or something) so that I wouldn't have to save a funky URL someplace. In addition to that, the option to have multiple trees (hit the holly button) is useless since only the browser that's seen all of your trees can access all of them (without the funky URL). It would almost be a feature if you could also forget trees that you've seen (keep a work tree and a home tree, perhaps, but no work at home). I think it badly needs the option of having a login or at least an unsecure custom URL option.

Because of no-signup, there is a great opportunity here for creating to-do lists for small collaborative projects. But Google-wave style simultaneous editing is not there (yet?).

Is that really lost if there's a login that keeps track of the individual list urls? I don't think they have to become private just because they're tracked.

Since it's described as "Task tracking for nerds" I think it would be nice if the export were compatible with Emacs org-mode [1]. These days, it feels like a lot of apps try to implement some of the features that org-mode has provided for a very long time, but it always seems as though they miss key features.

Then it would be even more fantastic if you could import a .org file.

[1] http://orgmode.org/

Right. Or just use org-mode. As an example I switched from Textmate to Emacs about a month ago because of org-mode. It is an absolute killer app! Before that, I was merely using Emacs to write commit messages or make small changes. Now it is taking more screenSpace*time per day than the browser :-)

If you are on the Mac, I [1] can recommend using Aquamacs [1] in the beginning. It supports shortcuts like Cmd-z, Cmd-c or Cmd-v in addition to the Emacs shortcuts. It does not allow for marking text with Shift-<arrow key> and does not support Emacs 24 yet, but org-mode is already pre-installed and will work like a charme. Just create a new file with the ending .org, open it in Emacs and you are already in org-mode!

[1] Carsten Dominic, the creator of org-mode recommends it, too! [2] http://aquamacs.org/

This. I have been using org-mode for a month or so and it is wonderful.

I also use Kalarm for reminders, e.g. stand up every 30 minutes, but also for longer term things.

And Anki for memorization and behavioral reminders.

I'm very curious: How do you use Anki for behavioural reminders (and what exactly do you mean by that?)

I'm a big fan of Anki's for language learning (I've studied some 4 or 5 languages with it already, and it went pretty well in all cases,) and I know many people use it for other things, but I haven't really seen something that would really captivate my interest besides language learning.

Loving the Ubuntu Mono text on the website. (It's my shell and editor font of choice - did a double-take when seeing it on a website!)

I also love the idea of the edit interface just being text, but the "most powerful input method" rings a little hollow when the actual text editor offered is a <textarea>, the least powerful text editor ever. (That said, I was able to use It's All Text[1] to open the contents in vim.)

[1] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/its-all-text/

CSS 2.1 allows to specify system fonts like "caption" or "icon". Unfortunately, you cannot specify "terminal".

For a similar tool I recommend http://workflowy.com/ , which also allows you to drive everything by the keyboard and do indented lists. Best simple to-do list system I've used.

I tried really hard to do something like this for note-taking (outlining) with VIM-style keybindings, but it never made it off the ground. Kudos to you for finishing (or, depending on your perspective, maybe just starting) this :)

In fact, my recommendation is to take this interface and apply it to notes. There aren't any good modal outline/note-taking editors out there, as far as I'm aware.

While I do like the interface, I think it might be better off as a primarily JavaScript app that syncs to the server, instead of having separate server-rendered pages for the notes. Would feel much snappier (even on a server that isn't being hammered by HN traffic ;])

Just so that there is no misinterpretation, I have nothing to do with the team that builded this webapp, I don't know them. I just thought it worked well and could be helpful for a lot of hackers here.

I have actually recently started using Vim with folding (set shiftwidth=2, set foldmethod=indent) for my nested todo list and also note-taking. I have a single file with the following items:

  Work
    Topic 0 (work-related)
    ...
  Personal
  Tasks
    Ongoing
      ...
    Completed
      2012-08-22
      ...
    Future
      2012-08-23
      ...

One thing I like is that it's trivial to make subitems of an existing item. I often end up taking notes (such as URLs of consoles or associated bug IDs) under tasks listed in "Ongoing", which I think saves me a bit of time.

Anyway, while there are some things I still need to tweak, I am, overall, quite happy with the workflow it allows and so just figured I'd share this in case it helps someone else.

Good job on building something.

However, after trying out numerous task tracking/todo apps, the best and most effective for me turned out to be a fountain pen (for added coolness) and a Leuchtturm pocket notebook. Nothing has worked better.

Isn't writing a bit slow compared to typing on the keyboard?

And you also have to take your attention off the screen (not necessarily a bad thing), and pick up a pen.

What about referencing a URL or text from browser relevant to the task?

I like it. I really love the minimalist styling. I think it'd be cool to add keyboard navigation so that you can select items and complete them. (Arrow up/down to select item, shift+alt+d{space, enter...} to mark as done?)

Oh, and I see that checking something as done prepends that line with "X ". So if I start a line that way it begins as done. Admittedly I was intentionally trying to cause this to happen, but maybe it'd be possible to flag the lines in some other way than with the "X "?

That's intentional. You can mark an item as "done" in text mode by prepending an X. It's even in the instructions.

I get that there's an idea around doing this all in text. Many developers do that by default. I think that one of the reasons they do it is because they have a text editor that they already love, that works offline, and has a lot of features already.

But here, you've created a new todo editor. Granted, it's pretty fast, but I'm not sure that it competes with sublime text, vim or whatever else people are currently using.

I'd be curious to understand what motivated this app, and what you think it adds over either text files in a text editor, or the existing ecosystem of todo managers.

I came expecting to see TaskWarrior ( http://taskwarrior.org/projects/show/taskwarrior ). I was disappointed.

Excellent app! I've been playing around with it for an hour now and can really see myself using it.

Inline editing is the one feature i miss the most. Also the tree list is a bit hidden. If they were visible you could switch faster betweem them and setup the app as a lightweight project management tool or issue tracker. Just add your users, milestones etc as own trees and copy/paste between them. Also a syntax like: (someissuenumber) ... which renders issue number in front of the line would make it kick-ass.

Great job!

Why not use Org mode in Emacs?

http://orgmode.org/

There are a butt-load of features and 50% of you retain your favourite editor.

There are a number of reasons, the dominant one being, sharing my outlines with other non-emacs users, especially non programmers.

It does have a few export options but I can understand your point.

"Export" is not "sharing".

Technically, it is - however, I already acknowledged that I can see why this would be easier to collaborate.

If I export something and send it to you, then you have one and I have one. If we share it, then we both have the same one.

You could use git to track the file and share the repo. That way multiple individuals can edit one file. It is just plain text after all.

this discussion started about sharing with non-emacs and non-developers. Git is not feasible for non-developers.

org-mode has a number of export options, including html (C-c C-e)

I really like it, I wish I saw more apps done the "nerd" way... would be really nice to have an email client, calendar, and even a social network the "hacker" way...

I wonder though why so much effort is made on TODO apps, it seems to me that no one seems to have found the right formula, but still it seems that there is an unanswered need

I had a very similar idea a few weeks ago, since I usually track to-do lists in a text editor anyway. But my idea (and what I would recommend) is no modes. There's no reason you can't have the normal UI act like a giant textarea. The really important part is supporting tab/shift-tab while doing this.

> There's no reason you can't have the normal UI act like a giant textarea.

Sounds like you're describing Workflowy: https://workflowy.com

Yes! This is exactly what I was thinking of, but didn't know existed. Thanks.

or TaskPaper, http://www.hogbaysoftware.com/products/taskpaper

There's a vim syntax for taskpaper's file format.

Direct link: https://github.com/davidoc/taskpaper.vim

I just love that plugin.

The (non-free) Mac desktop program OmniOutliner (http://www.omnigroup.com/products/omnioutliner/) also handles outlines like this. I use it for taking notes on a lot of things. It has its flaws, but it’s decently powerful – I use the custom text styles a lot for marking up code and file paths in my text.

I can also vouch for OmniOutliner, though I personally don't use it for task management. I use Notational Velocity (http://notational.net/) for taking reference notes, and for task management I email myself action items and tag them using the GTD system. Gmail's amazing tagging and filtering system and its abundance of single-key keyboard shortcuts make it better than any other system I've tried. I don't even miss being able to edit items; I've gotten used to either forwarding or making a new one, and it's a good tradeoff. I'll write an article about it someday.

For nearly everything else I'll default to OmniOutliner, and I usually have at least three or four windows of it open. I've never found any outlining software that comes close. Favorite features: Rarely lacks a keyboard shortcut I want it to have, has audio recording built in (I'd suggest an external mic for it to be useful though), and exports to plain text, HTML, RTF, and Word.

Interesting concept. I tried it and I was very confused what to do or what I should be doing but maybe that was sort of the point! I think an intro video would be helpful. However, I really like the colors and the font a lot, for me personally. :)

Here are my unimportant wishlist items:

* a stand alone app that syncs with either your service and/or remember the milk. * optional mark up * an option for a more keyboard-driven flow.

Even without those features, I think it's a fun app and I enjoyed how hassle free using this was.

Seems like a workflowy.com clone with monospaced font and a much more confusing interface?

And it didn't work ("something went wrong"). Other than that, awesomeness.

checkvist.com is a similar app with great keyboard shortcuts-I use that as opposed to workflowy.

+1 for Checkvist. This tool is so versatile it's unbelievable. I find myself using it for everything, from time tracking to note taking.

Workflowy Pro has custom themes and fonts ;)

Are you using clone in a negative way? I don't think workflowy has a lock on outlines, One could say that workflowy is just an emacs org mode clone except on the web

It'd be nice to have the shortcuts accept both ctrl and ⌘ as modifiers (for us Mac users)

Everyone here requesting a more vim-like interface or text editor integration should check out VimOutliner:

http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=3515

Very nice, and I appreciate the dark UI. I would like to see a faster UI though and an option to edit text in line. Also a native app for Android/iPhone would be good. I found the webpage loaded very bad on my Nexus One.

Nice. It would be nice if there were more key bindings. For example, up/down (or j/k) to move up and down the list. Spacebar could mark an item as done. Etc. I like the simplicity. Also ? should display key bindings.

Yeah, the tooltips are nice, but perhaps there should be a cheatsheet of all the keyboard commands?

Awesome stuff, really.

off topic: I find the comments to be very much in positive side after some time. Perhaps it's all the posts that were complaining about negativity on HN. Upwards.

It would be nice to actually use this from a text-editor. Maybe git integration? Auto-pull/commit in the web-GUI and standard git sync commands locally.

Awesome reference to Shane Carruth's movie, Primer, on the homepage. Funny, I seem to be the only one who noticed it, judging from the comments.

Love the visual style. Doesn't solve an unsolved problem for me personally. But I like the fresh approach.

If this model could be implemented into Sublime Text 2 (or your editor of choice) I'd be all over it.

don't "delete" the done items. Hide from my view but don't delete them. Because at the end of the day I should be able to see what I've done for today and what has been left for tomorrow.

The thumbnail-looking things on the right should be clickable.

It feels very sluggish here, immediate showstopper for me.

Thanks for this, especially the exporting to txt files!

This is seriously worth checking out. For it to be really useful for geeks, the keyboard shortcut interface has to be masterful (ie: worth learning). Or, like others are suggesting, at least replicate significant portions of vim. Doing 95% of the main ex/vim commands would be super easy. Emacs in the browser has probably been done by somebody somewhere, too, but... ugh. A big chunk of vim would be more than enough for a good app. Plus vim is more hip these days anyway.

If there's source available, I'd love to run a hosted version of this for myself. Unfortunately, I couldn't use this for work-related tasks, because any meaningful task list for me is going to liberally reference details of my company's IP.

Edit: Idea: Defaulting to HTML5 offline storage if available would be much better, with remote storage required to use sharing features. Don't take your user's data if you don't have to, right?

Oh hey another TODO list. Great.

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