CrunchBang - Code, Design & GNU/Linux

gedit todo Hack

UPDATE — Sun 21 Oct 2007
This works for Feisty but not Gutsy. I'll update this hack for Gutsy when I get time.

I'm not sure if anyone will find this little hack useful but I thought I'd post about it anyhow. Basically, I have always kept my to-do list in a simple text file on my desktop. Each new to-do item gets put on its own line in the file and I mark the beginning of each line with an indicator to show whether the item is waiting to be done [-], been done [#]or been canceled [;].

An example of this might look like:

/*
 * stuff to do and stuff that's already been done
 */
- complete report for Mr Smith
- take dog for walk
# blog about todo hack
; fly to the moon
# buy milk
# etc etc

Keeping my to-do list in this fashion has worked great for years and my current to-do list is a couple of thousand lines long. The only problem with my to-do list is it can be hard to read and scan. Enter my gedit hack.

gedit is GNOME's default text editor and I use it to edit my to-do list. One of gedit's great features [it has many more] is its ability to do syntax highlighting. My hack basically involves creating a new language file so that gedit will be able to highlight my to-do items differently depending on their status. Simply follow the instructions below to recreate the hack:

Enter the following command in your terminal:

sudo gedit /usr/share/gtksourceview-1.0/language-specs/todo.lang

Now copy & paste the following lines into the file before saving and closing gedit:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE language SYSTEM "language.dtd">
<language _name="TODO" version="1.0" _section="Others" mimetypes="text/plain">

    <block-comment _name = "Header" style = "Header">
        <start-regex>/*</start-regex>
            <end-regex>*/</end-regex>
    </block-comment>

    <line-comment _name = "Uncomplete" style= "To do">
        <start-regex>-</start-regex>
    </line-comment>

    <line-comment _name = "Complete" style= "Complete">
        <start-regex>#</start-regex>
    </line-comment>

    <line-comment _name = "Cancelled" style= "Cancelled">
        <start-regex>;</start-regex>
    </line-comment>

</language>

Now restart gedit and create a new to-do list file using the syntax shown in my example above. Then from gedit's menu go:

View -> Highlight Mode -> Others -> TODO

And finally, edit how you would like the highlighting to look. Again, from gedit's menu go:

Edit -> Preferences -> Syntax Highlighting

Once you have completed these steps you should have a nice syntax highlighted to-do file. See my example below: