Support folding things other than subtasks, like folding by tag

[sahil48]

I am looking for some improvements to folding built into in vscode-todo-plus to make it easier to more easily navigate through longer todo-lists, and where tasks for a project or time of day are spread throughout the document.

For example, fold everything but lines that have the tag @critical, etc. Fold all comments and only show active tasks and projects. Fold everything but projects.

It would also be great if you add support for region tags (see https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/editor/codebasics#_folding) in file formats supported by this extension. For example, I can add an @region at the start of a portion of a document I want folded when I open the document and @endresion at the end of a portion of a document I want folded.

[fabiospampinato]

This is partially a duplicate of #18.

Unfortunately there are no APIs for folding arbitrary lines (microsoft/vscode#37682).

I'm personally not a fan of those region/endregion things, I see very limited use for them 🤔

[fabiospampinato]

It's still impossible to properly implement tag filtering, but as of v3 this extension contributes a view to the activity bar that can be filtered by any arbitrary string. 👍

[sahil48]

You are awesome! Thank you so much. I'm sure one of these days, they'll allow tag folding, just like they finally implemented proper split screening after so many years.

In addition to active open files, can you also extend the activity bar view to any todo-supported files loaded in the explorer, with a toggle to switch between active and all files?

[fabiospampinato]

Unfortunately there's also no API for retrieving the list of currently opened files.

Would displaying all found todo files, and not just the one defined in the "todo.file.name" setting, solve your problem?

[sahil48]

Yes.

[sahil48]

You may also want to take a look at the following extension (https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=Gruntfuggly.todo-tree)

[fabiospampinato]

Yes

Maybe I'll implement that. I also want to better support multi-root workspaces.

You may also want to take a look at the following extension

Yeah I know about todo-tree, it's good. Is there any important feature missing?

[sahil48]

This is somewhat related, but I found an interesting idea in the extension vs-org that's worth reviewing. Instead of the sidebar, the app generates a report in a web-like view in a separate pane. You can click on the appropriate report item, and it takes you to the corresponding line. When the line gets updated, the report would also be updated and vice-versa (the reports can be made interactive too). This approach seems a lot more flexible than the sidebar, provided multiple files could be summarized in a single report.

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/robaboyd/vs-org/master/Images/openAgenda.gif
https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=BobbyBoyd.vs-org

[fabiospampinato]

@sahil48 That's an interesting approach but I'm not sure what benefits it would bring to the table. Like what feature is needed what we can't implement in the activity bar views? Also having these info in the sidebar is better in many occasions: 1) closing all open editors won't close it 2) It usually takes up less space, if you're using a webview you can't "hide" it when the user goes to the explorer view for instance (which may be a downside if one wants both visible though)