t: The shortest possible route

urukrama first sent mention of t, years ago, and I am sure I spent a little time with it soon after. It never latched on to me though, and still hasn’t … though that’s not anyone’s fault.

The homepage for t includes the tagline “It Does the Simplest Thing That Could Possibly Work,” and I think that’s an accurate statement.

t is simplistic without sacrificing practical function, and attacks each feature with the least amount of interference.

For example, as you can see in the screenshot, adding a task is the default, and is done just with

t Task to be added

t slots them, and lists them with just t. Removing or marking as “complete” is a single-letter flag.

Asking to see done tasks is a slightly longer step, but again, I’m sure the author of t would insist you should be working on those tasks, not waxing nostalgic over what you’ve finished. 😉

t is nowhere near as complex as taskwarrior, or as some others we’ve seen. But it does have all the major functions without occluding the final product.

Think about t if you just need a quick-fix solution to your task organizing problems, and don’t want to build an entire database just to remind yourself to wash the cat.

t needed a little nudging to get started; until I made a directory called “tasks” with a file in it called “tasks,” all I got was python errors. Slightly inconvenient. 😦

My only other complaint about t? That name. t is a little tough to pin down; it’s in AUR as “t-hg,” and if it’s in Debian, I couldn’t find it through the web-based package search. It’s mercurial-based, so it shouldn’t be hard to build.

I like t, but as I said at the start, it just never latched on to me. There are plenty more to choose from though. … 😕