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(Actually, that's a misnomer. These are really Repeatedly Asked Questions.)
Q: Does task install man pages?A: Yes. There are five man pages installed by task:
$ man task $ man taskrc $ man task-tutorial $ man task-color $ man task-faq
There is a lot of information in those pages - take a look!
Q: When I redirect the output of task to a file, I lose all the colors. How do I fix this?A: Task knows (or thinks it knows) when the output is not going directly to a terminal, and strips out all the color control characters. This is based on
the assumption that the color control codes are not wanted in the file. Prevent this with the following entry in your .taskrc file:
_forcecolor=on
Q: How do I backup my task data files? Where are they?
A: Task writes all pending tasks to the file ~/.task/pending.data and all completed and deleted tasks to ~/.task/completed.data. They are text files, so they can just be copied to another location for safekeeping. Don't forget there is also the ~/.taskrc file that contains your task configuration data. To be sure, and to future-proof your backup, consider backing up all the files in the ~/.task directory.
Q: How can I separate my work tasks from my home tasks? Specifically, can I keep them completely separate?
A: You can do this by creating an alternate .taskrc file, then using shell aliases. Here are example Bash commands to achieve this:
% cp ~/.taskrc ~/.taskrc_home % (now edit .taskrc_home to change the value of data.location) % alias wtask="task" % alias htask="task rc:~/.taskrc_home"
This gives you two commands, 'wtask' and 'htask' that operate using two different sets of task data files.
Q: Can I revert to a previous version of task? How?
A: Yes, you can revert to a previous version of task, simply by downloading an older version and installing it. If you find a bug in task, then this may be the only way to work around the bug, until a patch release is made.
Note that it is possible that the task file format will change. For example, the format changed between versions 1.5.0 and 1.6.0. Task will automatically upgrade the file but if you need to revert to a previous version of task, there is the file format to consider. This is yet another good reason to back up your task data files!
Q: I'm using Ubuntu 9.04, and I want task to word-wrap descriptions. How do I do this?
A: You need to install ncurses, by doing this:
% sudo apt-get install libncurses5-dev
Then you need to rebuild task from scratch, starting with
% cd task-X.X.X % ./configure ...
The result should be a task program that knows the width of the terminal window, and wraps accordingly.
Note that there are binary packages that all include this capability.
Q: How do I build task under Cygwin?
A: Task is built the same way everywhere. But under Cygwin, you'll need to make sure you have the following packages available first:
- gcc
- make
- libncurses-devel
- libncurses8
The gcc and make packages allow you to compile the code, and are therefore required, but the ncurses packages are optional. Ncurses will allow task to determine the width of the window, and therefore use the whole width and wrap text accordingly, for a more aesthetically pleasing display.
Note that there are binary packages that all include this capability.
Q: Do colors work under Cygwin?
A: They do, but only in a limited way. You can use regular foreground colors (black, red, green ...) and you can regular background colors (on_black, on_red, on_green ...), but underline and bold are not supported.
If you run the command:
% task colors
Task will display all the colors it can use, and you will see which ones you can use.
See the colors documentation for more details on which colors can be used.
Q: Where does task store the data?
A: By default, task creates a .taskrc file in your home directory and populates it with defaults. Task also creates a .task directory in your home directory and puts data files there.
Q: Can I edit that data?
A: Of course you can. It is a simple text file, and looks somewhat like the JSON format, and if you are careful
not to break the format, there is no reason not to edit it. But task provides a rich command set to do that
manipulation for you, so it is probably best to leave those files alone.
A: If you delete (or rename) your .taskrc file, task will offer to create a default one for you. Another way to do this is with the command:
$ task rc:new-file version
Task will create 'new-file' if it doesn't already exist. Note that this is a good way to learn about new con-
figuration settings, if your .taskrc file was created by an older version of task.
Q: Do I need to back up my task data?
A: Yes. You should back up your ~/.task directory, and probably your ~/.taskrc file too.
A: Yes, you can. Most people have success with a DropBox - a free and secure file synching tool. Simply configure
task to store it's data in a dropbox folder, by modifying the:
data.location=...
configuration variable. Check out DropBox at http://www.dropbox.com.
Q: The undo.data file gets very large - do I need it?
A: You need it if you want the undo capability. But if it gets large, you can certainly truncate it to save space,
just be careful to delete lines from the top of the file, up to and including a separator '---'. The simplest
way is to simply delete the undo.data file. Note that it does not slow down task, because task never reads it
until you want to undo. Otherwise task only appends to the file.
A: You will need to make sure your TERM environment variable is set to xterm-color, otherwise the easiest way is to
just try it! With task 1.9 or later, you simply run
$ task color
and a full color palette is displayed. If you see only 8 or 16 colors, perhaps with those colors repeated, then
your terminal does not support 256 colors.
See the task-color(5) man page for more details.
Q: How do I make use of all these colors?
A: See the task-color(5) man page for an in-depth explanation of the task color rules.
A: You cannot. But you can make the shell do it, and you can make the shell call the task program. Here is a Bash
script that does this:
#! /bin/bash printf "\033]0;task $*" /usr/local/bin/task $*
You just need to run the script, and let the script run task. Here is a Bash function that does the same thing:
t ()
{
printf "\033]0;task $*"
/usr/local/bin/task $*
}
Q: Task searches in a case-sensitive fashion - can I change that?A: You can. Just set the following value in your .taskrc file:
search.case.sensitive=no
This will affect searching for keywords:
$ task list Document
task will perform a caseless search in the description and any annotations for the keyword 'Document'. It also
affects description and annotation substitutions:
$ task 1 /teh/the/
The pattern on the left will now be a caseless search term.
Q: Why do the task ID numbers change?
A: Task does this to always show you the smallest numbers it can. The idea is that if your tasks are numbered 1 -
33, for example, those are easy to type in. If instead task kept a rolling sequence number, after a while your
tasks might be numbered 481 - 513, which makes it more likely to enter one incorrectly, because there are more
digits.
When you run a report (such as "list"), task assigns the numbers before it displays them. For example, you can
do this:
$ task list $ task do 12 $ task add Pay the rent $ task delete 31
Those id numbers are then good until the next report is run. This is because task performs a garbage-collect
operation on the pending tasks file when a report is run, which moves the deleted and completed tasks from the
pending.data file to the completed.data file. This keeps the pending tasks file small, and therefore keeps task
fast. The completed data file is the one that grows unbounded with use, but that one isn't accessed as much, so
it doesn't matter as much. So in all, the ID number resequencing is about efficiency. Q: How do I list tasks that are either priority 'H' or 'M', but not 'L'?
A: Task's filters are all combined with and implicit logical AND operator, so if you were to try this:
$ task list priority:H priority:M
There would be no results, because the priority could not simultaneously be 'H' AND 'M'. What is required is
some way to use OR instead of an AND operator. The solution is to invert the filter in this way:
$ task list priority.not:L priority.any:
This filter states that the priority must not be 'L', AND there must be a priority assigned. This filter then
properly lists tasks that are 'H' or 'M', because the two logical restrictions are not mutually exclusive as in
the original filter.
Some of you may be familiar with DeMorgan's laws of formal logic that relate the AND and OR operators in terms
of each other via negation, which can be used to construct task filters.
A: Task now has a 'denotate' command to remove annotations. First here is an example task:
$ task add Original task $ task 1 annotate foo $ task 1 annotate bar $ task 1 annotate foo bar
Now to delete the first annotation, use:
$ task 1 denotate foo
This takes the fragment 'foo' and compares it to each of the annotations. In this example, it will remove the
first annotation, not the third, because it is an exact match. If there are no exact matches, it will remove
the first non-exact match:
$ task 1 denotate ar
This will remove the second annotation - the first non-exact match.