Todo input from "text" to "textarea"

[marshmanGit]

This app has a nice UI and I would like to see the input field be a textarea field to make editing longer than normal items easier. This would improve the usability IMHO and you can circumvent LF with a special character if desired as not to inject them into the text file.

[ransome1]

Hi @marshmanGit.

That should not be a problem, although I would not replace the input field with a textarea, as the input field is imo sufficient in most cases.

How about a switch button that will replace the input field with a textarea on demand?

Can you explain, what you mean with "and you can circumvent LF with a special character if desired as not to inject them into the text file." I don't get it ;)

[ghost]

I think @marshmanGit means that, while being in the text area mode, you could insert new lines into the task's description. When saving it to the file, the LF (line feed) characters would be replaced with some other invisible and harmless ASCII character, for example ACK. And the code for displaying the loaded tasks would then replace ACK characters with the LF character.

Apart from the bigger text input field, it looks like this is also a feature request for multi-line tasks. Is that correct?

It's quite an interesting idea, but it abuses the todo.txt format, so I'm not sure if this is a good or bad thing.

[marshmanGit]

Absolutely! I was just offering a possible approach to address an issue you could run into due to the fact that Textarea input fields will typically allow Line Feeds. As @wsdfhjxc eluded to, your text files that hold the TASK data appears to parse based on line feeds ( Line 1 = task 1, Line2=task2 etc...). Provided that is true then you will need to replace LF in the textarea input value when posted with something else. You can then convert it back upon the user clicking to edit the task.

I appreciate the quick response and your alternate solution offering.

[marshmanGit]

In lieu of the textarea ( and possibly abusing the todo.txt format as @wsdfhjxc mentioned, another idea that may prove valuable would be to have a "notes". In my mind the missing element is the ability to supply some form of extended notes no matter how it is implemented. These could be kept within individual files per TASK (assuming most tasks will never have notes ) but since you don't have a unique identifier for each task then I'm not sure how you would relate them.

[ransome1]

@marshmanGit . Took me some time, but now I got it, sorry ;)

@wsdfhjxc , I'm not even sure if it would clash with the todo.txt rules, as the syntax doesn't change or anything. I think the problem is more, that it could be a feature that won't actually be used by many users. Also there might be some minor challenges with the date and recurrence picker or the suggestions container for contexts and projects.

I for instance add one todo after another using the keyboard shortcuts and I'm quite efficient doing this with sleek. For me a multi line textarea, with the purpose of creating more than one todo at once, wouldn't be helpful. But that's just me. If you have a really good idea on how to implement it user friendly, I wouldn't mind to merge a PR at all.

But let's talk about the textarea itself. I added it to a testing release: https://github.com/ransome1/sleek/releases/tag/v0.8.2

If you find a bit of spare time I would like to hear your feedback, if this helps you.

[ghost]

@ransome1 Yeah, it doesn't clash with the todo.txt rules. I was rather talking about ideological reasons, as the format doesn't support multi-line tasks by design (there is a discussion, however). And I don't know how much "faithful" to the todo.txt format sleek aims to be, but it seems you're not against that, so that's cool. Personally, single-line tasks are enough for me as well.

[marshmanGit]

Thank your for the update. AWESOME!!!