Content-Type: text/x-zim-wiki
Wiki-Format: zim 0.4
Creation-Date: Wed, 12 Aug 2009 13:22:10 +0200

====== Task List ======

The Task List plugin adds a dialog that lists open items across all pages of the current notebook. In a way it is a specialized search function. An open item or task is defined by a single line and can have tags and a priority.

**Dependencies:** This plugin has no additional dependencies.

**See also:** [[Usage:Getting Things Done]]

===== Options =====
This plugin has two options that can be configured:

If the option "**Consider all checkboxes as tasks**" is enabled any checkboxes found will appear in the task list. If it is disabled only checkboxes that have a task label (like FIXME or TODO) will appear in the list.

The option "**Labels marking tasks**" gives a comma separated list of labels that are used to flag tasks. By default these are "TODO" and "FIXME" but this can be customized.

===== Using Checkboxes =====
The first way to use the task list is to define open items by checkboxes. A list like this will be interpreted as a task list and each individual line will appear in the task list dialog.

[ ] Buy rice @groceries
[ ] Call Susan to invite for diner [d: 5/1] !
[ ] Print menu @desk

In this example the second item will have the highest **priority** because of the "!", the more exclamation marks the higher the priority. Also the words with an "@" will be considered **tags**, so the dialog will show the tags "groceries" and "desk" which can be used for filtering the task list.

A **due date** can be added by putting a date in between "[d: ]". Zim parses a couple of date formats:

'''
dd/mm		dd-mm
dd/mm/yy	dd-mm-yy
dd/mm/yyyy	dd-mm-yyyy
yyyy/mm/dd	yyyy-mm-dd
'''

So you can use e.g. "[d: 5/1]", "[d: 2010-1-5]" or "[d: 5/1/10]".

**Note: **dates are parse in European notation, so "dd/mm", not as "mm/dd" as is customary in the US. Unfortunately there is no way to resolve these unambiguously.

===== Using labels =====
The second way to use the task list is by using labels like "TODO" or "FIXME" in your notes. Labels can appear at the start of a line or directly after a checkbox. The rest of the lines is parsed the same as a task description after a checkbox. So the following will also be considered a task:

	FIXME: finish the previous paragraph

Different labels can be used similar to tags to distinguish different categories of tasks. 

As a special case labels can be used to flag a whole list being a task list. In that case the tag needs to start a new paragraph and be on a line by itself before the first checkbox. This usage is especially useful when the option "Consider all checkboxes as tasks" is turned off. Any tags on this first line will be applied to the whole list. However no other words should appear as that would make this first line a regular item and cause the list to be ignored. An example of this usage is as follows:

TODO: @home
[ ] Call Susan to invite for diner [d: 5/1] !
[ ] Print menu @desk

Now both items will get the tag "@home" appended.
