Make Tasks take less than 5 characters to create

Feature archive
1

This is tiny and stupid and may break Markdown, so that might be a non-starter, but I’d like to put a bug in devs ear about reducing input friction.

As of right now, if I want to create a task it takes 6 keystrokes. To mark a task completed, it requires replacing the space with an x, which is 2 keystrokes. This seems like needless friction.

I propose replacing - [ ] with -[], or even just []. This does a couple things. First, it reduces the number of keystrokes needed and B) there isn’t a need to replace a character to mark it completed: just add an x.

3 Likes
2

For now I’ve assigned An auto hotkey to print

  • [ ]
  • [ ]
  • [ ]
    This saves my time. but I get what you are saying.
1 Like
3

Yes, things like this is better to for keystroke macros as the permutations for various keystrokes is open-ended.

4

I kind of completely disagree. I’m not saying you’re wrong, I just have a different philosophy on the matter, I guess

In my mind, reducing input friction should be one of the core philosophies of a KMS. I shouldn’t have to go to a completely different program to get around simple data input friction.

I’m not talking about setting complete note templates either, I’m talking about how we fundamentally interact with the program. Tasks should be first-class citizens. Markdown is great shorthand, but in this one case, it adds more friction that is needed.

I also know what I’m asking for is trivial and I have no expectation of it being solved, but thinking about input friction and dealing with it thoughtfully turns a program from one I use into one I love.

5

Okay, win-win to not break .md and give devs unnecessary complexity, AND reduce keystrokes for the user:

Ship by default with a Hotkey(say Ctrl+T for Task), that

  • Inserts a task checkbox at the beginning of the line if not present
  • Toggles task checkbox between completed and not completed if already present.

This reduces it to 2 keystrokes for both add and mark; everyone’s happy?

4 Likes
6

Possible solutions to this might come with the WYSIWYG editor and/or future plugins. A lot of users are interested in task management features.

2 Likes
7

Command+hotkey added to 0.9.5

There is now a new command for toggling the checkbox state between and . Ctrl/Cmd+Enter is the default hotkey.