Apparently I’m always the last to know… But.. I found out today that phpTodo, the todo list manager I wrote (and continue to write) has been included in Fedora. In fact, it seems it’s been in there since Fedora 7. It’s not in the main distribution, nor should it be, but apparently it’s a maintained package. Thanks, Marc!
Honestly, I’m truly honored. I wrote this on a whim and it has served me well. I use it every day! And since writing it, I’ve had a handful of people make suggestions and offer patches. I think it’s been pretty successful for a small project.
So, how about an update? Well, I’ve been working on phpTodo in my spare time, which, unfortunately, has been relatively lacking as of late. I have been able to add in a number of fixes and new features, however. The biggest change in the next release will be the removal of categories in favor of having tags. In using phpTodo over the years, I’ve noticed a number of times where I’d like to be able to put an item in multiple categories, and display multiple categories at once. While this may have been possible with categories as they were implemented, I think tags works a bit better. I’ve borrowed an idea from the Serendipity blogging platform to implement tags in a user-friendly manner, so I think the implementation works pretty well. I still have some more work to tie it all together, but it is coming along.
Another change is the addition of the Prototype and Scriptaculous javascript frameworks. There are a few reasons I decided to go this route. First and foremost, it significantly reduces the amount of work necessary to perform cross-platform javascript operations. To date, I’ve used relatively simple javascript functions, mostly for front-line input validation, but with the addition of tags, I wanted to move into some more advanced techniques. I’m striving to keep it simple and not overdo it, so don’t worry.
And, of course, there are the various bug fixes that need to be added. Overall, I’m excited about the next release of phpTodo. I don’t have a timetable as of now, but I’m hopeful that my free time will increase shortly, giving me more time to work on it. If so, then I’m optimistic about a new release sometime in the next 3-4 months. We’ll see what happens.
If you’re using phpTodo, I’d like to hear from you. I’m interested in what you like and what you dislike about the program, the interface, the workflow, etc. What features would you like to see? What features would you hate to see?
Thanks!