[Feature Request] Bullets for TODOs

[ghost]

I want to suggest something like this:

Suppose we have ('*' represents unicode bullet from this package):

* Heading 1
* Heading 2

Now, setting a TODO on a heading should result in:

☐ Heading 1 # TODO, using a unicode "ballot box"
☑ Heading 2 # DONE, using a unicode "ballot box with check"

[ghost]

Possible characters can be:

• U+2714 ✔ heavy check mark
• U+2717 ✗ ballot x
• U+2611 ☑ ballot box with check
• U+2610 ☐ ballot box

Users can be provided options to use other symbols, such as smileys etc.

Still, this is all hypothetical, as I don't know if this can (and will be) implemented or not.

[theophilusx]

There is an alternative way to achieve something similar. If you define your toto keyword sequences so that they include a leading UTF8 charcter, you can get similar look. i.e.

(sequence " ☐ TODO(t)" " ☑ DONE(d)")

The limitation of this is that it isn't backwards compatible i.e. old todo sequences won't work and I don't know what impact this might have on export backends.

[msanders]

Here's another workaround that preserves existing text while allowing for unicode checklists in org mode:

(font-lock-add-keywords 'org-mode
                        '(("\\(?:\\(?:- \\)?\\[ ]\\)"
                           (0 (prog1 () (compose-region
                                         (match-beginning 0)
                                         (match-end 0) "☐"))))))

(font-lock-add-keywords 'org-mode
                        '(("\\(?:\\(?:- \\)?\\[X]\\)"
                           (0 (prog1 () (compose-region
                                         (match-beginning 0)
                                         (match-end 0) "☑"))))))

;; From http://www.howardism.org/Technical/Emacs/orgmode-wordprocessor.html
(font-lock-add-keywords 'org-mode
                        '(("^ +\\([-*]\\) "
                           (0 (prog1 () (compose-region (match-beginning 1)
                                                        (match-end 1)
                                                        "•"))))))

It might be worth building this into org-bullets, though it seems like it might be unmaintained.

[ppareit]

@msanders it seems like the following fork takes pull requests and is also the one that is used on melpa:
https://github.com/emacsorphanage/org-bullets