TODO pane

Use case or problem

I’m somewhat used to writing in Atom. When I write, I often leave out things that need to be fixed later – missing references (REF), general todos (TODO), etc. Atom has a great plugin that collects all these (you can configure it what to collect) and then it lists them on a side pane with clickable links. Since these occur inline in the text, they are not “todo-s” in the usual bucket-listy kind of way but just part of the text (TODO ugly sentence, rewrite).

Proposed solution

It would be really nice to see all TODO’s, REF’s, etc. of the active file in a side pane, with jumpable links.

Current workaround (optional)

I use search currently. Maybe it would be doable with tags as well, but I use tags for other things. The problem with search is that it is cumbersome, and when I’m working on a file, I’m not interested in TODOs in other things.

Maybe this is more like a plugin idea than a feature request. If so, please just move it.

3 Likes

Borrowing from @johw’s solution here, you could create a TODOs note with the query you’re interested in and move it into the side pane.

2 Likes

This works indeed, thank you. (Although it’s not file-specific.)

How so? When I search for “- [ ]” I see all todo’s with the file they are in. If you want to search for todo’s in a specific tag for example something like :slight_smile:

“- [ ]” tag: works also.

You’re right, it shows the file they are in – I just meant that it shows all the occurrences, grouped by file.
I have several writing projects at a time and so get a lot of results, and a lot of them I’m not interested in at the moment. But maybe I can set up an embedded query for each writing file separately. Will experiment.

(The other minor annoyance with this method: when I click on a search result because want to jump to that specific todo, it either opens in the same pane as the todo list was originally, or I cmd+click, and then it opens in a new pane. But it never opens in the pane I already have open with that text. If that makes sense.)

Anyway, thanks for the workaround suggestion, definitely more usable than the standard search I had been using.