.TH task-faq 5 2010-02-22 "task 1.9.1" "User Manuals" .SH NAME task-faq \- A FAQ for the task(1) command line todo manager. .SH DESCRIPTION Task is a command line TODO list manager. It maintains a list of tasks that you want to do, allowing you to add/remove, and otherwise manipulate them. Task has a rich list of commands that allow you to do various things with it. .SH WELCOME Welcome to the task FAQ. If you have would like to see a question answered here, please send us a note at . .TP .B Q: Where does task store the data? 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. .TP .B Q: Can I edit that data? 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. .TP .B Q: How do I restore my .taskrc file to defaults? 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 configuration settings, if your .taskrc file was created by an older version of task. .TP .B Q: Do I need to back up my task data? Yes. You should back up your ~/.task directory, and probably your ~/.taskrc file too. .TP .B Q: Can I share my tasks between different machines? 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. .TP .B Q: The undo.data file gets very large - do I need it? 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. .TP .B Q: How do I know whether my terminal support 256 colors? 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. .TP .B Q: How do I make use of all these colors? See the task-color(5) man page for an in-depth explanation of the task color rules. .TP .B Q: How can I make task put the command in the terminal window title? 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 $*\a" /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 $*\a" /usr/local/bin/task $* } .TP .B Q: Task searches in a case-sensitive fashion - can I change that? 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. .TP .B Q: Why do the task ID numbers change? 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. .TP .B Q: How do I list tasks that are either priority 'H' or 'M', but not 'L'? 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. .SH "CREDITS & COPYRIGHTS" task was written by P. Beckingham . .br Copyright (C) 2006 \- 2010 P. Beckingham This man page was originally written by P. Beckingham. task is distributed under the GNU General Public License. See http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-2.0.txt for more information. .SH SEE ALSO .BR task(1), .BR taskrc(5), .BR task-tutorial(5) .BR task-color(5) For more information regarding task, the following may be referenced: .TP The official site at .TP The official code repository at .TP You can contact the project by writing an email to .SH REPORTING BUGS .TP Bugs in task may be reported to the issue-tracker at