TITLE: Todo lists in Vim, syntax highlighting
DATE: 2022-06-20
AUTHOR: John L. Godlee
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I keep a todo list on my computer, which contains tasks for work 
and home. It also contains items where I'm waiting for someone to 
do something, and I use it as a scratchpad for bits of pertinent 
information that might be useful in the near future. The file is 
written in Markdown. Items in the list are written as bullet points 
(-), and sometimes I group items together under headers (#). 
Sometimes I have headers for each day of the week, and sometimes 
for a particular project I'm working on. The bullet point list of 
tasks is sometimes nested to include extra information about each 
task, or to add subtasks below a main task.

  [Markdown]: https://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/

I've known about the todo.txt file format for a long time, and I 
see the logic in it. todo.txt is very flexible and has a number of 
optional features. You can specify due dates and creation dates 
(2022-05-05, due:2022-05-05), prioritise tasks using a letter 
system ((A), (B)), group tasks by project (@project) or context 
(+context), mark tasks as done ([ ], [x]) and optionally move 
completed tasks to a separate done.txt file. In my current system I 
already move tasks to "done" files, one per day, and I often add 
creation dates and due dates, especially on tasks where I'm waiting 
for someone to do something.

  [todo.txt]: http://todotxt.org/

The thing that has always put me off using todo.txt is the 
inability to add longer descriptions or subtasks to a task. Each 
task must occupy a single line. I also like having the ability to 
group tasks under headers as this allows me to plan my time, but 
todo.txt requires each line to be a task. Whenever I've dabbled 
with todo.txt in the past, it's always given me tunnel vision, 
making it so I can only focus on the next few short tasks ahead of 
me, at the expense of understanding the wider context of my work. 
That being said, I would like to start making use of the context 
and project tags from todo.txt to organise tasks in my todo.md file.

I do most of my task management in neovim. I wrote some syntax 
highlighting rules to extend the basic Markdown syntax highlighting 
in vim, by placing a file at 
~/.config/nvim/after/syntax/mardown.vim. The file contains:

  [neovim]: https://neovim.io/

    syntax  match  TodoDate  '\d\{2,4\}-\d\{2\}-\d\{2\}'
    syntax  match  TodoDue  'due:\d\{2,4\}-\d\{2\}-\d\{2\}'
    syntax  match  TodoProject  '\(^\|\W\)+[^[:blank:]]\+' 
    syntax  match  TodoContext  '\(^\|\W\)@[^[:blank:]]\+' 

    highlight  default  link  TodoDate  Type
    highlight  default  link  TodoDue  Constant
    highlight  default  link  TodoProject  Comment
    highlight  default  link  TodoContext  Statement

So when I open my todo.md it looks like this:

  ![Screenshot of todo.md showing syntax 
highlighting](https://johngodlee.xyz/img_full/todo/scrot.png)