Things Parser 3

Good question. My understanding is that there is no “official” spec for the TaskPaper format. My script uses the same parser, Birch Outline, as the Mac App called TaskPaper, which is the origin of the format. It does require indentation to denote hierarchy, so I’ve simply followed that. Perhaps the behaviour of Birch Outline is the closest we have to an official spec?

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Just re-reading your question, perhaps I misunderstood. An isolated task outside of a project doesn’t need to be indented to be valid, but indentation is required for a task inside a project (or for subtasks).

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Thanks. Then what md2pptx does is right:

  • Require * as a bullet marker - with indentation honoured.
  • Reserve - as a Taskpaper task marker, with at least one @ required on the same line.

Not quite compliant but it covers almost all the bases.

It’s easy then to winnow out the tasks. Also md2pptx uses these tasks to create Task Slides at the end of the presentation, parsing popular @ values to create tables - with each task row pointing with a live link back to the slide it’s meant for.

The point is this is good for presentation project management.

But I digress. Sorry!

Great work here more simple than before !!
Question? :slight_smile:
Do you know if with the same draft we add an action to create an event in Fantastical?
As I use it as my central schedule point in my workflow?
Thanks

@Patrick68, you can certainly make Drafts parse lines in a draft multiple times. There are many posts in the forum and actions in the action directory that deal with Fantastical, and in ways to process information in Drafts. You also don’t have to combine everything in one action per se. You can chain actions together through the Include Action action step.

You also seem to have posted the same point/question three times on three different threads today. I would suggest you give folks a little more time to ponder your request for assistance.

While you note in one of those that you are “very poor in scritping”, I would suggest that you at least give things a try. You have lots of starting points available, and increasing your skills in this area will pay dividends and open up numerous opportunities for you. You may even surprise yourself, but you never know until you try.

Also, note that when you have smaller, specific questions, that can also open up the option for many more forum users to help you with the questions that you might have.

Hope that helps.

Hi Sylumer
Sorry if I have broke some forum rules here.
I have tried to post where I think it was the most relevant
now due to quality of this parser to create a todo in Thing I would need to have from the same draft a Fantastical event.
Thanks for your help

When you registered, you should have seen the FAQ. In the Keep it Tidy section, it states:

  • Don’t cross-post the same thing in multiple topics.

… that’s kind of what you were doing, and as the FAQ suggests, that just makes it messy, in that people who might want to reply wouldn’t know which of the three places is the best place to reply to you.

Don’t stress over it, the “Don’t divert a topic by changing it midstream.” entry in that same section is bent/broken a lot of the time in the course of discussions. Really they should branch off an reference back to the original thread, but that rarely happens.

In fact, the case could reasonably made that this discussion of the guidelines in the FAQ is precisely such a divergence … :face_with_hand_over_mouth:

@pdavisonreiber - think you for all of your hard work! I used V2 almost daily for a long, long time and have made the decision to move to V3.

I am seeing an issue where tapping on the action in a draft does not process the text. The behavior is basically I tap on Things Parser and nothing happens. I do have the Birch Outline installed in the Drafts directory as well.

I have searched and it does not seem that anyone else is having this issue, so I guess it might be user error. Anything that I may have missed?

That probably means your taskpaper formatted text is invalid in some way. I need to add better error messaging at some point.

Is there any chance you could share the text you are using the action on?

Thanks for the reply! Ah yes, it was my syntax. I am new to the taskpaper format and did not include the "- " before the task.

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Glad you found a fix. Thanks for raising this though: it has reminded me I need to add error messages for this kind of thing, rather than silently failing. Watch this space for an update!

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Thanks for your work. A question. Is it possible to enrich an existing project with several tasks without entering “@list (name)” on each line?

Not at the moment, I’m afraid.

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How can we use more than one parameter to define?

I recently found your action, installed the latest version, but when I run it nothing happens. Is there some kind of permission I should enable?

Your action has been an incredible help as I experiment with using Things as a replacement for OmniFocus; thanks for your hard work!!

Long story short, I currently use a Keyboard Maestro macro to do a bunch of actions. The final output is an OmniFocus (hopefully Things) project with a bunch of customized notes, links, and dates.

My transition to Things hinges on your action (again, thank you); my question is related to relative dates. My KM Macro will produce a Taskpaper template with relative dates such as:

@when(2022-04-07-1w)

However, after running Things Parser, this task shows up in Things with a “When” date of April 14th. Any advice on how I can use relative dates correctly?

Again, thanks for making this tool. It’s a huge help!

Hi Mike, thanks for your message. The date offsets part of my script actually only applies to the Mustache Parser part where variables like dates can be substituted into templates. (See here for more information.

Since you are not using that, the parsing of the dates is all being done by the Things app, not by my script. I have tested your input and am getting the same behaviour. Things does support relative dates in natural language, but you might have to use the Things app to test what does and doesn’t work. You can do this by making a new task and hitting the “when” button and try entering various natural language inputs. For example, I think that “1 week before 2022-12-25” does work correctly. Perhaps you can alter your KM Macro accordingly.

Does that help?

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OHH, I am sorry for misunderstanding that! Thank you for taking the time to correct me and point me in the right direction!

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@Mike_Burke would love to read more about your switch. Maybe in a private message or a thread?

I moved from OmniFocus to Things some time ago and had some struggles with Things
as you can read here One software lie ... [[GTD-ness]]

Is there a way to assign tasks to an area (and not to a project)

@area(name) or @areadID(id) is not working for me.

EDIT: @list works :slight_smile: