8 ms·

Show HN: I Made a Todo List for Developer Power Users [video]

112 points by skytrias 4y ago

Hey HN, I've been working on Todool for a year trying to make an editor that fits my development workflow. a) Fast text-editing without needing to touch the mouse b) Multi-Selection to perform commands on more than a single line c) Switching between List/Kanban mode You can try the free demo at itch.io for (Windows/Linux) https://skytrias.itch.io/todool#demo https://skytrias.itch.io/todool#demo

crdavidson 4y ago
Ooh, I've seen this before on the Odin newsletter! https://odin-lang.org/news/newsletter-2022-11/ https://odin-lang.org/news/newsletter-2022-11/ Exciting to see this get some spotlight. Was it entirely from scratch? Did you build it on SDL or Sokol or something?
- skytrias 4y ago
  hey colin :D todool is built on top of sdl2 + mixer & stbtruetype for fonts
inferense 4y ago
This is great! I'm building a developer-first knowledge base with tasks [1] and getting such experience with tasks is quite difficult. Something we're cracking just now. Great job.
geoelectric 4y ago
Well, I guess after years of all the good Todo apps being Mac/iOS, this serves us right! It sounds way interesting, though. I'll have to boot a VM to try this out.
- skytrias 4y ago
  once i get a mac it should be easy to port
joemasilotti 4y ago
This is an amazing demo! It's rare to see a live demo this polished. And one that uses the app itself to actually do the demo? Even better. Nice work! I'm excited to see where this goes.
- replwoacause 4y ago
  I'm not normally a dissenting voice, but this demo was very irritating to me.
Dyac 4y ago
Seems similar to https://workflowy.com/ https://workflowy.com/, which has been around for 12 years and has the same features + more and is prettier.
- mtlynch 4y ago
  It's a little silly to critique a Show HN for having fewer features and less UI polish than a tool that's had a 12 year head start.
  - ctvo 4y ago
    It's, however, not silly to ask what this new tool brings to the table, and why users should use it vs. the tool that's existed for 12 years.
    - xavierlint 4y ago
      True. I hope someone asks that question, no one has done it so far.
    - maximus-decimus 4y ago
      simple answer : workflowy is what? $15 per month whereas this one is $20 for life. Also Workflowy is online and this is offline so this can be used for work whereas I wouldn't use an online app like workflowy for company information.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
rickstanley 4y ago
Would you mind telling what is the underlying rendering engine/framework?
- skytrias 4y ago
  todool is mostly custom built on top of sdl2, sdl2mixer and stbtruetype. the renderer does basic batching of commands
sublinear 4y ago
I thought power users just write nested bullets in a plain text file? It also happens to be valid markdown when you do that.
eps 4y ago
There gotta be a rule that Show HN videos must be non-monetized or hosted off YouTube.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
beepbooptheory 4y ago
Looks like it can do about 60% of what Org-mode can do, which is pretty good for apps like these!
lopan 4y ago
After buying it and using it for a few hours on Windows: Things I don't like - As you might expect for a version 0.5, there are pretty frequent crashes, which appear to happen mostly when expanding/contracting or hiding/unhiding a root node. Save often. Things I do like - No installation required. No subscription. It's a bit like Workflowy and a bit like Treesheets (as mentioned previously), but I find it easier to read than either. It's fast. As someone who suspects that they might have partial ADHD, I love that there are several ways you can put a "spotlight" on what you are working on (depending on the theme) - 1) Selecting more than one line causes other lines to be greyed out; 2) "Highlight" changes the background colour of the current line; and 3) "Focus" causes everything except the immediate branch to be hidden! So good! Looking forward to the future and more stability. :-)
JoeyBananas 4y ago
Did you just reinvent org mode?
polytely 4y ago
Feels to me like the default completion green in the demo video is too low contrast on the white background. I would check if the contrast ratio is high enough (it's important for accessibility).
ricardobeat 4y ago
This reminds me of https://checkvist.com https://checkvist.com, which I hope would be used more. It's actually a great replacement for Trello or any other kind of board for smaller projects.
- crispinb 4y ago
  I've been a paying user of Checkvist for years. It's a a pleasing rarity in the contemporary web software world - a simple useful and reliable keyboard-driven tool with little hype and no world-conquering aspirations. It improves year on year, but at no great velocity. It seems to be entirely the property of a team of 2 who are personally responsive at their user forum (https://discuss.checkvist.com/ https://discuss.checkvist.com/). I supposed one could call it 'artisanal', but it was that before the term came into regrettable fashion.
  - nospoon999 4y ago
    As a Checkvist user, too, I'm really happy whenever I see it mentioned. It deserves a lot of credit for all the things it does right, keyboard shortcuts especially.
    - crispinb 4y ago
      Yes me too. The developers have done a great job of keeping it focused. It being a side project probably makes that easier (no wolf at the door pestering them to make it more profitable). FWIW if you're interested I have a little commandline capture tool for pinging items onto the top of a default Checvkvist list: https://github.com/crispinb/cvcap https://github.com/crispinb/cvcap. I find it useful when I'm in the terminal and think of something I need to note. It's unpolished but functional.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- swah 4y ago
  I also tried using similar tools - Checkvist, Workflowy, Dynalist, Trello... They "stop working for me" after a few days/weeks - probably when I start needing notes on tasks, and tasks on notes...
itake 4y ago
Seems like some neat ideas here. but I am a bit confused who the customer is for this. I am a software engineer that heavily uses todo tracking apps, but this isn't for me. I use todoist to manage my life. Critical features are mobile app and scheduling tasks. I use jira to manage project work. Critical feature is multi-user. This is desktop only, so I can't use it for my grocery list. This doesn't seem to let me share tasks with other people to track my progress and delegate work. I guess if I am a solo dev and I wanted a private system to track my tasks that isn't JIRA, then this is useful?
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- TeMPOraL 4y ago
  It's definitely useful as a benchmark: it's the fastest, most streamlined task wrangling - and generally, tree-wrangling - UX I've seen so far, seemingly ahead of structured editing tools for Lisp like Paredit, though I'd have to play with Todool to be sure. If its existence generates enough pressure on more mainstream tooling to improve its ergonomics, that'll already be a huge win for the entire space.
- wingerlang 4y ago
  > I guess if I am a solo dev and I wanted a private system to track my tasks that isn't JIRA, then this is useful? Are you saying this is a rare thing? I doubt many solo devs use JIRA.
- skytrias 4y ago
  Agreed the target audience for now is single users & private only. I'm currently working on separate collaboration version which will be dumbed down but similar to how google docs / figma work - so you can see other users write and interact live.
didgetmaster 4y ago
Is this a completely 'off-line' tool or do does it need some kind of connection to a central server? Does it send any of your data over the network or does all your information remain local (i.e. private)?
- skytrias 4y ago
  yes it's completly offline the savefile is a .todool file which ppl wanted a json export option options + theme files are json
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
dpcx 4y ago
A lot of what I saw in the demo video looks like workflowy.com with a slightly different UI on it. It feels a little faster than workflowy, so that's definitely a bonus.
bbor 4y ago
I love this app!! The UI is super fast and the demo is well made. I think either way you’ll find users, tho it is a crowded space - the most important part is whether you personally find it useful I think :) I think you’d get a lot of the features people are complaining about missing, namely around mobile usage, by having this just be a GUI for editing markdown files. Markdown is amazing, it can definitely store all these states, and can be edited with a plain ol text editor if you don’t have time to write a phone app. For an example of how powerful “a gui that stores its content as specialize markdown” can be, see obsdidian.
enobrev 4y ago
This is excellent. Well done! I love the demo. I've been wanting to work on something similar, with "scriptable tagging" plugins, so that I could, for instance, enter text like [ABC-123], and have it auto-link to a jira or linear ticket. Ideally it would show the state and possibly allow drilling-down into the contents for those tickets as well (expand ticket shows description, status, expand further to show comments, etc) Likewise with slack links, github links, etc. Ideally those links could potentially also allow interactions with said services (marking done in-app, marks "complete" in ticket app) I think I'd also want items in which I could write full text entries - but still referenced in the same list-style format, expanding the text as needed. Anyway - those are the features I personally want in _something_ like this, in a markdown editor, something I end up writing poorly and leave to die on some drive somewhere - wherever.
ActionHank 4y ago
I did not know itch was also used to sell and distribute software
- pjc50 4y ago
  Isn't "games" a subset of "software"? :)
- skytrias 4y ago
  humble store and steam also allow software, epic games store doesnt allow software though
eigenvalue 4y ago
Looks interesting but really does not handle super high DPI screens well in Windows-- the interface text is extremely tiny and hard to read. You should probably detect the resolution and adjust the default UI text and task text to always be a comfortable size for easy reading.
- skytrias 4y ago
  dont have high DPI but I enabled the setting you can scale tasks up/down with ctrl+scroll UI text scale can be adjusted in the options file - dont have a slider for it
_jplc 4y ago
This heavily reminds me of TreeSheets https://strlen.com/treesheets/ https://strlen.com/treesheets/
narag 4y ago
Nice job. This looks very much like something I've been doing for some time... years :-) The thing with this is it's exhilarating to use once it's working. Congrats!

112 points by skytrias 4y ago

crdavidson 4y ago

Ooh, I've seen this before on the Odin newsletter! https://odin-lang.org/news/newsletter-2022-11/ https://odin-lang.org/news/newsletter-2022-11/ Exciting to see this get some spotlight. Was it entirely from scratch? Did you build it on SDL or Sokol or something?

skytrias 4y ago
hey colin :D todool is built on top of sdl2 + mixer & stbtruetype for fonts

inferense 4y ago

This is great! I'm building a developer-first knowledge base with tasks [1] and getting such experience with tasks is quite difficult. Something we're cracking just now. Great job.

geoelectric 4y ago

Well, I guess after years of all the good Todo apps being Mac/iOS, this serves us right! It sounds way interesting, though. I'll have to boot a VM to try this out.

skytrias 4y ago
once i get a mac it should be easy to port

joemasilotti 4y ago

This is an amazing demo! It's rare to see a live demo this polished. And one that uses the app itself to actually do the demo? Even better. Nice work! I'm excited to see where this goes.

replwoacause 4y ago
I'm not normally a dissenting voice, but this demo was very irritating to me.

Dyac 4y ago

Seems similar to https://workflowy.com/ https://workflowy.com/, which has been around for 12 years and has the same features + more and is prettier.

mtlynch 4y ago
It's a little silly to critique a Show HN for having fewer features and less UI polish than a tool that's had a 12 year head start.
- ctvo 4y ago
  It's, however, not silly to ask what this new tool brings to the table, and why users should use it vs. the tool that's existed for 12 years.
  - xavierlint 4y ago
    True. I hope someone asks that question, no one has done it so far.
  - maximus-decimus 4y ago
    simple answer : workflowy is what? $15 per month whereas this one is $20 for life. Also Workflowy is online and this is offline so this can be used for work whereas I wouldn't use an online app like workflowy for company information.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

rickstanley 4y ago

Would you mind telling what is the underlying rendering engine/framework?

skytrias 4y ago
todool is mostly custom built on top of sdl2, sdl2mixer and stbtruetype. the renderer does basic batching of commands

sublinear 4y ago

I thought power users just write nested bullets in a plain text file? It also happens to be valid markdown when you do that.

eps 4y ago

There gotta be a rule that Show HN videos must be non-monetized or hosted off YouTube.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

beepbooptheory 4y ago

Looks like it can do about 60% of what Org-mode can do, which is pretty good for apps like these!

lopan 4y ago

After buying it and using it for a few hours on Windows: Things I don't like - As you might expect for a version 0.5, there are pretty frequent crashes, which appear to happen mostly when expanding/contracting or hiding/unhiding a root node. Save often. Things I do like - No installation required. No subscription. It's a bit like Workflowy and a bit like Treesheets (as mentioned previously), but I find it easier to read than either. It's fast. As someone who suspects that they might have partial ADHD, I love that there are several ways you can put a "spotlight" on what you are working on (depending on the theme) - 1) Selecting more than one line causes other lines to be greyed out; 2) "Highlight" changes the background colour of the current line; and 3) "Focus" causes everything except the immediate branch to be hidden! So good! Looking forward to the future and more stability. :-)

JoeyBananas 4y ago

Did you just reinvent org mode?

polytely 4y ago

Feels to me like the default completion green in the demo video is too low contrast on the white background. I would check if the contrast ratio is high enough (it's important for accessibility).

ricardobeat 4y ago

This reminds me of https://checkvist.com https://checkvist.com, which I hope would be used more. It's actually a great replacement for Trello or any other kind of board for smaller projects.

crispinb 4y ago
I've been a paying user of Checkvist for years. It's a a pleasing rarity in the contemporary web software world - a simple useful and reliable keyboard-driven tool with little hype and no world-conquering aspirations. It improves year on year, but at no great velocity. It seems to be entirely the property of a team of 2 who are personally responsive at their user forum (https://discuss.checkvist.com/ https://discuss.checkvist.com/). I supposed one could call it 'artisanal', but it was that before the term came into regrettable fashion.
- nospoon999 4y ago
  As a Checkvist user, too, I'm really happy whenever I see it mentioned. It deserves a lot of credit for all the things it does right, keyboard shortcuts especially.
  - crispinb 4y ago
    Yes me too. The developers have done a great job of keeping it focused. It being a side project probably makes that easier (no wolf at the door pestering them to make it more profitable). FWIW if you're interested I have a little commandline capture tool for pinging items onto the top of a default Checvkvist list: https://github.com/crispinb/cvcap https://github.com/crispinb/cvcap. I find it useful when I'm in the terminal and think of something I need to note. It's unpolished but functional.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
swah 4y ago
I also tried using similar tools - Checkvist, Workflowy, Dynalist, Trello... They "stop working for me" after a few days/weeks - probably when I start needing notes on tasks, and tasks on notes...

itake 4y ago

Seems like some neat ideas here. but I am a bit confused who the customer is for this. I am a software engineer that heavily uses todo tracking apps, but this isn't for me. I use todoist to manage my life. Critical features are mobile app and scheduling tasks. I use jira to manage project work. Critical feature is multi-user. This is desktop only, so I can't use it for my grocery list. This doesn't seem to let me share tasks with other people to track my progress and delegate work. I guess if I am a solo dev and I wanted a private system to track my tasks that isn't JIRA, then this is useful?

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
TeMPOraL 4y ago
It's definitely useful as a benchmark: it's the fastest, most streamlined task wrangling - and generally, tree-wrangling - UX I've seen so far, seemingly ahead of structured editing tools for Lisp like Paredit, though I'd have to play with Todool to be sure. If its existence generates enough pressure on more mainstream tooling to improve its ergonomics, that'll already be a huge win for the entire space.
wingerlang 4y ago
> I guess if I am a solo dev and I wanted a private system to track my tasks that isn't JIRA, then this is useful? Are you saying this is a rare thing? I doubt many solo devs use JIRA.
skytrias 4y ago
Agreed the target audience for now is single users & private only. I'm currently working on separate collaboration version which will be dumbed down but similar to how google docs / figma work - so you can see other users write and interact live.

didgetmaster 4y ago

Is this a completely 'off-line' tool or do does it need some kind of connection to a central server? Does it send any of your data over the network or does all your information remain local (i.e. private)?

skytrias 4y ago
yes it's completly offline the savefile is a .todool file which ppl wanted a json export option options + theme files are json
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

dpcx 4y ago

A lot of what I saw in the demo video looks like workflowy.com with a slightly different UI on it. It feels a little faster than workflowy, so that's definitely a bonus.

bbor 4y ago

I love this app!! The UI is super fast and the demo is well made. I think either way you’ll find users, tho it is a crowded space - the most important part is whether you personally find it useful I think :) I think you’d get a lot of the features people are complaining about missing, namely around mobile usage, by having this just be a GUI for editing markdown files. Markdown is amazing, it can definitely store all these states, and can be edited with a plain ol text editor if you don’t have time to write a phone app. For an example of how powerful “a gui that stores its content as specialize markdown” can be, see obsdidian.

enobrev 4y ago

This is excellent. Well done! I love the demo. I've been wanting to work on something similar, with "scriptable tagging" plugins, so that I could, for instance, enter text like [ABC-123], and have it auto-link to a jira or linear ticket. Ideally it would show the state and possibly allow drilling-down into the contents for those tickets as well (expand ticket shows description, status, expand further to show comments, etc) Likewise with slack links, github links, etc. Ideally those links could potentially also allow interactions with said services (marking done in-app, marks "complete" in ticket app) I think I'd also want items in which I could write full text entries - but still referenced in the same list-style format, expanding the text as needed. Anyway - those are the features I personally want in _something_ like this, in a markdown editor, something I end up writing poorly and leave to die on some drive somewhere - wherever.

ActionHank 4y ago

I did not know itch was also used to sell and distribute software

pjc50 4y ago
Isn't "games" a subset of "software"? :)
skytrias 4y ago
humble store and steam also allow software, epic games store doesnt allow software though

eigenvalue 4y ago

Looks interesting but really does not handle super high DPI screens well in Windows-- the interface text is extremely tiny and hard to read. You should probably detect the resolution and adjust the default UI text and task text to always be a comfortable size for easy reading.

skytrias 4y ago
dont have high DPI but I enabled the setting you can scale tasks up/down with ctrl+scroll UI text scale can be adjusted in the options file - dont have a slider for it

_jplc 4y ago

This heavily reminds me of TreeSheets https://strlen.com/treesheets/ https://strlen.com/treesheets/

narag 4y ago

Nice job. This looks very much like something I've been doing for some time... years :-) The thing with this is it's exhilarating to use once it's working. Congrats!