KanbanTxt

A light todo.txt editor that display the to do list as a kanban board. See here for a detailed description of the todo.txt format.

The goal was to have a one file script that open a tkinter GUI to edit my todo.txt files and displaying a kanban view of my tasks.

Prerequisites

• Python 3
• Know the todo.txt format (see here for a detailed description of the todo.txt format)

Installation

Just download the KanbanTxt.py script.

Usage

Run KanbanTxt

python KanbanTxt.py

By adding the --file parameter it is possible to open a todo.txt file while opening KanbanTxt

python KanbanTxt.py --file=path/to/my/todo.txt

Or the button "Open" in the GUI allows to open a file through GUI.

Edit the to do list

To edit the to do list you can use the integrated text editor to the left of the kanban board panel. To refresh the kanban view, press ctrl + space.

Select a task

You can click on the text in a task card to move the cursor of text editor to the right line.

Move a card to an other column

I used the todo.txt priority prefixes to define in which column each task should appear. I am not sure it fully respect the todo.txt format but it does not seems a total nonsense either.

• (A) A task in progress and therefore a task with the highest priority. Goes to the To Do column.
• (B) The very next step to do when all the tasks in progress are done. It is a To Do task tagged as important.
• (C) This task is done but need to be validate before considering it as finished. It goes to the Validation column.
• x This task is finished and goes to the Done column.
• A task with no priority prefix goes to the To Do column, waiting to be treated.

You can also use ctrl + 1-5 to move the task under the text editor cursor to the corresponding column.

1. To Do
2. Importan
3. In progress
4. Validation
5. Done

Or you can do the same by using the five buttons under the editor.

Reorder the tasks in the text editor

The buttons with an up and a bottom arrow allow to move the current line of editor one step up or down. The same action can be done with the shortcut alt + ↑ and alt + ↓.

Show the time spent on a task

Using the "+ date" button add the date of the day at the begining of a line in the editor. This allows to define a creation date and a completion date to the task.

If a creation date is provided, KanbanTxt will display the number of days elapsed from the creation date to the current day on the task. If a completion date is provided, KanbanTxt will add a label to show the time spent on the task.

Use the dark theme

A little switch with a sun and a moon on the top left corner of the application allows to switch between light and dark mode. This setting is not saved and the program always start with the light theme. But you can launch KanbanTxt in dark mode by running:

python KanbanTxt.py --darkmode

Current support of the todo.txt format

• priority prefixes
• project tags +project
• context tags @context
• creation date
• completion date
• special key/value tags