A plain-text file format for todos and check lists

Re:A plain-text file format for todos and check lists by 0xbadcafebee on Monday August 22, 2022 @05:12PM (#32557350)

It would be simpler to just use the ISO date format. Otherwise people have to implement their own date parser for your stricter format, which adds code (and therefore bugs) and increases probability that people will incorrectly implement the spec.

Why wouldn't you allow space before the checkbox? If somebody accidentally has a space because it's not obvious in their editor (esp. if items can be separated by two newlines) what happens? Undefined behavior? Your format looks a lot like Markdown so I wouldn't have assumed this was a spec requirement unless I looked closely (most people don't look at specs closely)

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Re:A plain-text file format for todos and check lists by jotaen on Monday August 22, 2022 @05:33PM (#32557589)

> It would be simpler to just use the ISO date format.

[x]it! is supposed to be edited (editable) by hand, and from an end-user perspective, I personally find ISO-8601 in its entirety relatively complex to grasp. The currently supported date formats aim to be a tradeoff between “flexible enough” but “not too complex yet”.

> Why wouldn't you allow space before the checkbox?

To enforce a tidy layout of the file. Whitespace before the checkbox (i.e. on the same line) is undefined behaviour. The idea is that editor plugins help users with compliance of the rules. For example, I think that all available [x]it! editor plugins would highlight it if there was illegal whitespace in front of a checkbox.

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