Display¶

so what does this htask look like ?

see also: themes
htask - display

here's Paul's first mockup

an even more compact mock-up by Charles

tcy adds additional mock up with lots of inline thinking-out-loud. source file (open office) with manual coloring file avail in the files area with names
htask-tcy-2009-05-19.{odt|pdf|png}.
tcy adding his thoughts.

- note multiple options for top section. (not all will be used)

- do we need to show # done? djp: if only for the reward/ gratification factor

- do we need to show htask and version? this is not a windowing system djp: no, but we should, AND show report.name

- lines 2-4 cribbed from PINE mail client  djp:good source

- date listing... should we use the 'ls' convention and display month/day (dropping year) and if the element is more than a year old, display year only?

djp: sounds good. as long as it's still clear, tighter is better.

(mocked up right here on the groups.google page!)(and yes I know these are impossible colors)

Wednesday, May 21st, 2009 - wk21 - overdue:9 - due today: 14

Task2.0 - custom                      search string(if any)                             142 pending

1 selected                   include: retired, someday (if any)                       show 324 done 

           There are 14 tasks about to be marked as done, this action can be reverted

continue? (Y/n)[attrs][tags];

ID pri description                                  project      tags       rating ANSX             

70 H   investigate government grant, bursary, pr... admin        research   **     S              

90 M   re-implement use of sc for cashout           admin                   ***  A S              

49 M   get liability account interest rates         admin.acct   research   **    N               

20 M   order more cheques (DPD & PC1)               admin.acct   bank              A                

51 M   apply for PST exemption                      admin.tax    mail              AN               

65 M   print out all staff/ training docs           admin.train  NA print           N X             

21 M   print linuxcaffe manual                      admin.train  print             AN X             

14 M   fix shower leak                              home         home       **                      

59 M   fix dishwasher door                          maint                   *                       

     add  breaks  contacts  done  edit  find  groups  history  info  journal  keys  list  next      

annote  projects  quit   rc   stop  tags  undo  verbose  wait  exec  my.stuff  zhide.done

the white underlining is an artifact of the html involved (looks better in "edit" but don't screw it up)

-showing continue AND oneky-bar (illogical), ratings, truncation, flagged attributes (Annotation(s), Notes, Started, e(X)ec)

notes to screenshotters; post yours here, too

make them all this size (how big is this ?)

in representing the onekey-bar, show it with [a b c d e f g] or [A B C D E] options,

they won't ever be seen mixed as, of course, <shift> toggles case.

[tcy: are you saying taht by pressing shift, the letters displayed will change chase, and thus change their associated actions?]

djp: yes

pb: That may not be possible. I think (think) that ncurses only propagates completed keystrokes.

djp: grrrrr..

breaks

While task can already sort on date, imagine a listing with clear visual separators (ie. a full width color bar that says Monday - May 4th) between time intervals (day/ week/ month) so that if I have 15 things to do today, and 10 tomorrow (and so on) I can see the week (month) clearly laid out instead of visually parsing the date column.
how about;

break:due - Tasks Overdue | Tasks Due | Tasks Not Yet Due | Untimed Tasks
break:hour - 1:00pm | 2:00pm | 3:00pm .. (i know, i know, just put it in ;)
break:day - (today) Tuesday, May 5th | (tomorrow) Wednesday, May 6th | Thursday, May 7th | Friday etc..
br:week - (this week) 17th week, 2009 | (next week) 18th week | 19th week | etc
b:month - (this month) May, 2009 | (next month) June, 2009 | July , 2009 | etc

to be used in any combination, customized and and turned on/off by default in .taskrc, or specified any time the the CLI.
The same approach could be used to tart up some reports (like listing by project) by making nice bold headers for each section (if so styled) and these breaks might dramatically improve the readability of various exports, too.

breaks are sort-dependent, like listing breaks based on date are invalid on anything other than sort-on-date.
A "projects" break only makes sense, when the list is sorted by project.
settings for this may be report specific

the same techniques used to display date-base breaks, will also be great for "headers" in other reports like;
f12 - reports / exports / imports list (breaks between types)
@ lists tasks grouped by context (TBD) (breaks between contexts)

breaks functionality will also be great for tarting up various exports.
(Charles demonstrated a singe row of pixels break (or was it two?) in his screenshot, nice option)

the breaks and summaries connection
breaks serve not only to clarify listings, but by the very nature of their function and position, form an incredible set of instant summaries. When moving through a listing with breaks, if you select a break, and hit <enter> a full summary report should be generated specific to the data set indicated by that break. Hit <esc> and you're back to the original listing.

Screen elements
(in suggested default order, top-to-bottom)

- date-bar - displays full date and time info (and alarms ?)
- title-status-bar - what is going on ?
<left:appname.version><center:active search filter><right:#pending)
search string bold only if "saved" (ie. not bold until user hits <enter>)
<left:#selected><center:active-includes (show:c/z/Z)><right:#completed>
- verbosity-bar - displays verbose (or terse) action confirmation output (toggle with (v)erbose)
(mute=no v-b, quiet=v-b if <error>, terse=1row, chatty=2rows+)
- input-bar - for prompts, dialog input and for find string input
- list-panel - where the good good listing happens
- onekey-bar - listing keys available for given context with some status indication
or
- index-bar (replaces onekey-bar, only seen when in (I)ndex-mode)
shows evenly spaced 0-9 a-z (or A-Z), with choice indicated

Screen elements should be configurable (on/off/top/bottom/colors/hideable) except list-panel,
and visibility of bars deemed "hideable" have visibility toggled with f11 ("full screen" mode)

listing display options

right now, word wrapping is the only listing display option, but I think we will want a few more;
most of these are to allow reports that have larger <description>s or notes:<file> which might wreak havoc on the basic listing mode

truncation - some reports should be able to show only the first N characters and a ...

   and here's a super easy handle for that;

   if the offending text's last non-white space = "..." (three dots)

   then that text will be truncated

flags - some fields in some reports should just display a "flag" to indicate presence of an attribute value

multi-line

mixed use list-panel

   for example, when combining task and contact data, the fields don't correspond,

   so the contact data will have to be listed first (or last)