Just for the record, I’m not some huge taskwarrior fan. I have a feeling that someone, a long time ago, fed me a list of taskwarrior derivatives-stroke-variants, and I’ve finally gotten around to wading through them.
taskopen allows you to use taskwarrior to annotate tasks, and connect them to files, hyperlinks, scripts or whatever you like.
It might be easier to see, than to explain. Imagine you add a taskwarrior entry like this.
kmandla@jk7h5f1: ~$ task add Check home page
taskwarrior dutifully responds with
Created task 1.
Now suppose you annotate that item with the actual home page to check. Do that like this:
kmandla@jk7h5f1: ~$ task 1 annotate -- https://inconsolation.wordpress.com
taskwarrior, unaware of its newly found superpowers, replies with:
Annotating task 1 'Check home page'. Annotated 1 task.
“Hey, wow, K.Mandla,” you say. “That’s like, sooo amazing.” 🙄
Trust me. When have I ever steered you wrong? (Okay, don’t answer that.) Here’s where the fun starts:
kmandla@jk7h5f1: ~$ taskopen 1 START /usr/bin/palemoon "https://inconsolation.wordpress.com"
and pow, the address for the page opens in your alpha-male browser. 😯 Just like magic.
That’s a rather primitive example, and the one more or less afforded by the readme file on taskopen’s main page. If you extrapolate from there though, you can imagine
- Reminders that can link straight to PDF forms.
- Tasks that are connected to specific web sites, like tax forms, conversion charts or bookmarked pages.
- Chores that trigger scripts that do whatever, like performing a backup or encrypting a file.
- To-do items that open their respective files automatically, in $EDITOR.
- Tasks that connect to abstract things not usually allowed in a text-only environment, like images or audio files.
Think of it as a way of preserving bookmarks within a task manager, at the command line.
taskopen is nifty because it stacks something interesting on top of an already powerful tool, and takes it in an unexpected direction. I’m sure you can think of a use or two that was beyond me.
taskopen has its own set of individual options, so you’re not just slinging tasks into Firefox. There is more than enough available to keep you interested.
Now let’s move on, before someone thinks I’m spamming for taskwarrior. 😀
Inconsolation 