DonationCoder.com Software > N.A.N.Y. 2011
NANY 2011 Release: TaskDaddy Release
daddydave:
Any command line arguments which are not options are combined into a single task. In practice, this means you can usually either use double quote characters or not, so that for example:
taskdaddy "@@Home Recycle the bottles #6/2 :in the garage" /p
is the same as
taskdaddy @@Home Recycle the bottles #6/2 :in the garage /p
--- End quote ---
There's a story for behind this, that only geeks will care aboutTaskDaddy doesn't actually see the quotes, it doesn't have much choice other than to see everything in quotes as a single parameter because that is the way it comes in. Originally I tried to parse the command line as a string ($CmdLineRaw) instead of the $CmdLine array, which did allow me to see the quotes but that made the code very error prone and also caused different behavior in the interpreted and compiled versions. By using the array, I am also able to use the _OptParse module to standardize other (non-task) command line processing. Anything that is not processed by switch parsing is left over and parsed by me. Getting identical behavior with and without the quotes was kind of a relief. I wanted to allow the quotes but not require them.
Needless to say (I think), command line switches should not be inside the quotes, as the example shows.
daddydave:
I wonder if it is too early for a poll of what the most important missing feature of TaskDaddy...
- support recurring tasks
- support more built-in task fields
- support custom task fields
- support merging a command line with tasks from a file, e.g., taskdaddy "@@Errand Buy _ from Wal-mart" /f groceries.txt
- support for Lightning addon for Thunderbird
- a companion program CalendarDaddy
- a pop-up notification confirming the task has been added to Outlook
- ability to customize reminder time
- ability to mark a task as complete
- support user friendly dates such as #tomorrow or #+3 (for three days from now)
- support spaces in categories
- user specifiable special characters to prevent conflicts
daddydave:
EDITED for clarity a few times
@Stuff New stuff 2 #01/11/2010 @the stuff : hupla
--- End quote ---
DeVamp: You say you find it strange that the delimiter : does not appear in the output. I disagree. To me it is strange that you would expect the delimiter to appear in the output. It is strange to expect the colon at the beginning of a word to sometimes act as a delimiter and sometimes not.
Perhaps the real problem is twofold:
(1) Problem 1: That the colon was chosen to be a special character. Say for example, I had chosen semicolon to signal the task body instead of colon. Then you would be able to say
@Stuff New stuff 2 #01/11/2010 @the ;stuff : hupla
--- End quote ---
or, with task body deduction, you could still leave the semicolon out.
@Stuff New stuff 2 #01/11/2010 @the stuff : hupla
--- End quote ---
The problem is, if I had used a semicolon, it is just as likely that someone out there is using the semicolon the way you are using the colon. And someone is using the ~ character. So the way out of this seems to be to allow the user to specify their own delimiter somehow.
This is an inherent problem with using special characters. Compare for example Quick Outlook Task which uses extensive command line switches instead of special characters. Honestly, in spite of the fact that jpijper is a DonatonCoder member (long absent it seems unfortunately), I never knew this program existed before I started creating TaskDaddy. Note that he advertises it as a "FARR alias" but can be used from the command line without far as well. The problem of special characters will only get worse as features are added to TaskDaddy over time.
(2) Problem 2: Maybe task body deduction itself is a bad decision I made. I don't recall any other program that parses that way.
Maybe I should have simply required the colon to introduce the task body:
@Stuff New stuff 2 #01/11/2010 @the :stuff : hupla
--- End quote ---
For this to work, I think I would still have to require all subsequent trigger characters to be ignored, which means I would still have a problem with initial colon meaning trigger sometimes and included as regular text sometimes.
DeVamp:
Daddydave,
Did you get my PM with the link?
daddydave:
Daddydave,
Did you get my PM with the link?
-DeVamp (September 22, 2010, 04:30 AM)
--- End quote ---
Yes, and I ran it. I doubt I will integrate it into my existing code. My current code is like a desk, it is messy but I know where everything is. Plus lately every new line of code I add introduces a new bug. Plus, it is a section of code that I have investing a lot of testing and bug fixes in, I am not ready to begin that cycle again.
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