notnow

Changelog

notnow is a terminal based task/TODO management program.

Two of its overarching goals are to allow for tag based filtering of tasks, along with fully user-definable tags and views, and to support server based synchronization of iCalendar-style TODO items as per RFC 5545 using the CalDAV protocol as specified by RFC 4791.

Status

notnow is being used actively on a day-to-day basis, without any known issues. Most of the desired functionality exists, but not everything is hooked up to the UI yet:

tag based filtering is implemented and fully functionally, but not all aspects of it are available through the UI
the program stores tasks as iCalendar TODO items
- it loosely follows the Vdir storage format, enabling task synchronization between different systems via vdirsyncer
- "native" CalDAV support without a Python dependency is considered, but there exist no immediate plans to get there

Configuration

The program stores its configuration below $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/notnow/ (which most commonly defaults to ~/.config/notnow/). Configuration is two-fold:

notnow.json is a JSON file storing basic program state such as colors and views ("tabs") to display
- when not present, defaults are being used
- this file will be auto-created with the default contents once the user saves data from within the program (see below)
tasks/ is a folder comprised of files for individual tasks
- the file 00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000 is special and contains task meta data such as tag information
- the program takes care of creating said files as tasks are added

Note: If you were a user of notnow in version 0.2.* and want to carry managed tasks and configuration over to version 0.3, the script at var/config-conversion-v02-to-v03.sh may be of help.

vdirsyncer

If you would like to synchronize tasks with your CalDAV enabled calendar and/or share one set of tasks between different systems running notnow, vdirsyncer is the recommended way to go about that.

Here is a configuration template that specifies relevant settings, along with some opinionated ones (typically stored at $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/vdirsyncer/config):

[general]
status_path = "~/<some-path>/vdirsyncer-state/status/"

[pair todos]
a = "todos_remote"
b = "todos_local"
collections = ["from a", "from b"]
conflict_resolution = ["command", "nvim", "-d"]

[storage todos_remote]
type = "caldav"
item_types = ["VTODO"]
url = "https://<url-to-calendar>"
username = "<username>"
password.fetch = ["command", "sh", "-c", "pass <calendar-provider-entry> | head -n1"]
read_only = false

[storage todos_local]
type = "filesystem"
path = "~/<some-path>/vdirsyncer-state/todos/"
fileext = ""
encoding = "utf-8"

Please refer to its documentation for additional details.

With the configuration in place, once you vsyncdir discover, create a symbolic link below ~/<some-path>/vdirsyncer-state/todos/ replacing the automatically created subfolder with a reference to $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/notnow/tasks/. Next, synchronize tasks using vsyncdir sync.

Please note that task synchronization should happen before or after running notnow, to prevent collisions with changes happening concurrently from the program.

Usage

Being terminal based, notnow is controlled through its UI as opposed to command line parameters. The program aims to mirror Vi style bindings where that is possible. The key bindings are as follows:

Key(s)	Function
a	Add a new task
e	Edit selected task's description
t	Edit selected task's tags
d	Delete selected task
j	Move task selection down
k	Move task selection up
J	Move selected task down
K	Move selected task up
g	Select first task on the current tab
G	Select last task on the current tab
Space	Toggle completion state of selected task
h	Select tab to the left
l	Select tab to the right
H	Move tab to the left
L	Move tab to the right
1-9	Select tab #x
0	Select last tab
`	Select previous tab
/	Start task search forward
?	Start task search backward
n	Continue task search forward
N	Continue task search backward
*	Start forward search for currently
	selected task on other views
Return	Accept text input
Esc	Cancel text input
w	Save tasks to file
q	Quit program

In addition, when inputting text (e.g., when adding or editing a task), the backspace, delete, home, end, and left and right cursor keys have functions similar to those they carry most commonly.

The program has support for libreadline style task input, when built with the readline feature flag enabled. That is, when entering actual text (as opposed to just pressing a key to, say, selecting a different task), libreadline bindings will be honored.

Example

If you are just interested in trying out the program with some programmatically created tasks, you can use the existing example:

$ cargo run --example=with-test-data --features=test

Note that if saved, tasks will be stored in a temporary directory and not overwrite user-specific configuration mentioned above.