To Do Tree

[deviantopian]

From the creator of Note, comes To Do Tree.

To Do Tree lets you create, save and easily access several hierarchical lists. It stores each list in an xml file and its settings in an ini file in the folder it's run from. It doesn't write anything to the registry.

I'm a bit of a perfectionist and a little obsessed with getting my programs to "just work" and be intuitive without having to interrupt the user at all. I haven't been able to do this as much as I'd like with this program - it still prompts the user to save the first list they create. I'm thinking of starting off with a default list on first run so that you'd only be prompted to save if you delete all lists. I'd be glad to hear any of your thoughts on this. There are a few other prompts I'd like to get rid of but I'm not sure how.

Anyway, if any of you would like to have a play about with it and give me some feedback that would be cool.

Richard

[mouser]

looks elegant -- i like the minimalist approach. 

[Dormouse]

I think a checkbox is an essential part of any todo list, however simple.

Apart from that a really minimal approach has a lot of uses.

[mouser]

Dormouse is right, you need to be able to check off completed items and see that you have completed them.
However in keeping with your minimalist approach, a nice compromise would be a View mode that let you decide whether you wanted to see all items (with checkboxes user could mark for completed items), or view only unfinished items (which would hide all checked items).

[deviantopian]

Yeah, checkboxes is a good idea. I was thinking of having formatting options for individual items to specify high/low priority / completed items, amongst other things.

Thanks.

Richard

[mouser]

keep it simple and minimalistic -- that's it's charm.

[ppass]

I like both pieces of software Note and To Do Tree.  Could you combine the two: add the possibility to attach a Note to a node in the tree. Double clicking on the node would open the note.

If you are going to implement that, may I have a special request. As I use all my software as portable and my data on a USB external storage disk, could you make it possible to point to a Note with a "variable" path:

- support for Windows Environment Variables
Example: %windir%\Note1.note
would open the note C:\Windows\Note1.note

- support for disk labels (the idea comes from SyncBackSE: http://www.2brightsparks.com/help/index.php?action=kb&article=11)
Example: %LABEL=Disk1%\Dir1\Note2.note
would open G:\Dir1\Note2.note
where the disk with label "Disk1" is given the drive letter G: This is extremely useful, because depending on the PC where I plug in my external drive (containing the Note data), it may de referred to as F:\ on one PC and G:\ on the other (F:\ may already be allocated to another drive). Referring to the drive with its label makes this robust.

I hope that this is a small change / improvement for you and will help you cross-promote both software.

[ppass]

One more request, could you add an import/export function to Excel? Depth1 to dos would go to the first column, depth2 to dos go to the 2nd column, etc.

[ppass]

Could you also speed up the creation of sub items? For example:

- pressing the Enter key on a newly created Item would add its first sub-Item.

- pressing the Enter key on the last sub-item would add a new sub-item at the bottom.

- pressing the Delete key on a sub-item or an item would delete it.

[ppass]

A button to collapse/expand all notes would come in handy as well.

[deviantopian]

Hey ppass, thanks for your feedback

I'm submitting a rewrite of this app for NANY 2009:
http://www.donationcoder.com/forum/index.php?topic=16008

Keyboards shortcuts will be added for most things, you can already use Shift+Down for a new item and Shift+Right for a new sub-item. I'll find some way of implementing collapse/expand all as well.

Thanks for the info on support for disk labels etc... that'll be useful; Your other suggestions are certainly possibilities, but for now they'll have to stay that way

Richard

[ppass]

Thanks.

Talking about keyboard shortcuts, please add CTRL+Z "Undo".

When you say "Thanks for the info on support for disk labels etc... that'll be useful;", do you mean that you accept to attach a note to each node in the To Do Tree as I suggest you?

[deviantopian]

When you say "Thanks for the info on support for disk labels etc... that'll be useful;", do you mean that you accept to attach a note to each node in the To Do Tree as I suggest you?

I see you are an optimist , but I'm afraid not, no. I want to concentrate on getting each program to do its specific job as well as possible. I can see how your suggestion would be useful, but I think if I was going to combine the two I'd might prefer to do it from the ground up.

I'll add undo to my to do list

Richard

[ppass]

I see, so you can't combine the two? It looked fairly simple to me (add a link to a note from each Note). But I am not a programmer, so I can't tell for sure...


One more improvement I may ask: when drag and dropping a node to an other node, can you make it become a subnode?

Example:
A
|-A1
|-A2
B
C
|-C1

Drag and dropping C into A would lead to:
A
|-A1
|-A2
|-C
  |-C1
B


I thought that this is the default behaviour of a tree view, but it does not seem to work like that in To Do Tree.

[deviantopian]

I see, so you can't combine the two? It looked fairly simple to me (add a link to a note from each Note). But I am not a programmer, so I can't tell for sure...

Well I'm only a beginner programmer myself (this is my third application). Yes, it seems simple and it's certainly possible. However there would quite a few things to take into account when doing this. For starters, the Note application allows Notes to be stored anywhere... you could add a link to a Note from each node, but what if the Note is moved? What should the program do then?

One more improvement I may ask: when drag and dropping a node to an other node, can you make it become a subnode? Example:

A
|-A1
|-A2
B
C
|-C1

Drag and dropping C into A would lead to:

A
|-A1
|-A2
|-C
   |-C1
B

I thought that this is the default behaviour of a tree view, but it does not seem to work like that in To Do Tree.

The default behaviour of a tree view is also to add new items above the currently selected item. Where I come from we read and write from the top left to the bottom right. So the default behaviour isn't always the most intuitive.

If nodes are always created as child nodes of the node they're dropped on, what happens if you just want to reorder your top level nodes? I'm currently working on sorting out the reordering of items, so I'm certainly interested in hearing your thoughts on this.

[deviantopian]

Just been playing around and noticed that nodes are added as siblings if you drop them to the left of a node

It may be better to keep the default settings here as doing it the other way is making things complicated

[ppass]

you could add a link to a Note from each node, but what if the Note is moved? What should the program do then?

It should be up to the user to be aware that if he moves notes around, then they may not be seen in to do tree anymore.
But to help the user, this is where environment variables come in handy, as explained in my initial post.

If nodes are always created as child nodes of the node they're dropped on, what happens if you just want to reorder your top level nodes? I'm currently working on sorting out the reordering of items, so I'm certainly interested in hearing your thoughts on this.

I am not going to define specs from scratch for this. For me the absolute reference for moving nodes in a tree is feedreader. feedreader is a rss reader. The left pane lists subscribed feeds in their category. A feed can be moved from one category to an other by drag and drop. You can also drop an item between two others, then a line appears between the two items and you can drop the item very precisely between the two.
You may try it out for yourself. feedreader comes by default with pre-loaded feeds and categories, so you can try this very easily.

If you wish to discuss slightly different specs, I am open, let me know.

[Gothi[c]]

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I like the fact that you can store multiple lists in the combo below - that was a nice idea.

[deviantopian]

I've had a look at FeedReader. The behaviour of its tree is more complicated than in To Do Tree because there are two different types of items - folders and feeds - and a folder cannot become a child node of a feed. A drop-target indicator would definitely be nice. I think I'd have to use a more advanced TreeView though as the one I'm using doesn't offer that capability out of the box.

Drag & drop is giving me more headaches now - specifically to do with it forgetting the expanded state of the nodes when they're moved .


Hey, that's pretty cool, Gothi[c]... great minds think alike . Yours seems to be more structured than mine with Projects and Tasks. The changelog is a nice idea as well.


I won't be developing To Do Tree any more. Any further development will happen on Tree List (my NANY 2009 submission), so check it out here: Tree List