todostack.el

General use

Todostack is a trivial (and experimental -- use at your own risk) todo list manager for a particular way of doing things that may or may not appeal to you. It uses a stack as a todo-list system. The idea is to reduce the effect of distractions. When you have to switch tasks, push what you are currently doing onto the stack with command todostack-push', then when you return, inspect the stack with todostack'. When you have finished the task currently on the top of the stack, pop it off with `todostack-pop'

Command todostack-list' will list the whole current stack in order from top to bottom. It uses the value of todostack-list-function' to decide how to do it, so you can easily write your own list function which should be a function of zero arguments. Three such functions are pre-defined: First, todostack-list-buffer' and todostack-list-echo-area' -- the first creates a buffer and lists the stack there; the second does what it sounds like. The default, however, is `todostack-list-dwim' which tries to decide if the list will fit in the echo area and if so displays it there using the first of those functions, and if not displays it in a buffer using the second of those functions.

You can also use command todostack-procrastinate' to push back the top item on the list by one space (or farther with a prefix arg) and you can use todostack-rotate' to send the top item all the way to the back. You can use `todostack-queue' to add something to the bottom of the stack instead of the top, which lets you treat the stack more like a queue.

Commands todostack-save' and todostack-load' will save and load the todostack to a file specified in the variable todostack-save-file'. The default is "~/.emacs.d/todostacksave.el". Also, todostack-backup' will make a backup copy of the current stack in a file in the same directory and same name with an extention named by variable todostack-backup-extension'. This is a very good function to add to todostack-before-save-hook' -- so good, in fact, that I have made it the default and set the extention to ".bak". See also todostack-rescue'. Finally, if you want to hack on it, see todostack-test'.

Loading

You can use the customize interface if you like it. I use use the following in my .emacs. The hooks allow my stack to persist across Emacs sessions and in case of a crash, by aggressively saving the stack whenever I modify it. I strongly recommend their use:

 (load-file "/PATH/TO/todostack.el")
 (load-file todostack-save-file)
 (add-hook 'kill-emacs-hook 'todostack-save)
 (add-hook 'emacs-startup-hook 'todostack-load)
 (add-hook 'todostack-post-op-hook 'todostack-save)

I also bind some of the most-used functions to keys of my choice.

Other functions

You can have multiple todo stacks, but can operate on only one at a time -- whichever is named by the variable todostack-current-stack'. The default is the aptly-named todostack-default-stack'. A stack is simply a Lisp list, so you need only initialize a symbol to nil and then set todostack-current-stack' to point to it. But REMEMBER TO ALSO CHANGE todostack-save-file', or else your old saved todostack will get clobbered the first time you try to save the new stack. For example:

 (defvar mystack '())
 (setq todostack-current-stack 'mystack)
 (setq todostack-save-file "~/mystacksave.el")

Org-mode integration

Org-mode users may find it useful to use command todostack-org-snarf' to convert a buffer with org TODO items into a stack. See the doc string for todostack-org-snarf' for more information. You will probably want to set or customize the following:

 (setq todostack-list-function 'todostack-list-buffer)
 (setq todostack-list-line-prefix "* TODO ")
 (add-hook 'todostack-post-list-buffer-hook 'org-mode)