Summary

This plugin provides a dockable tabular list of comments extracted from the text of a file being edited in jEdit. The display shows an icon representing the type of comment, the line where the comment appears and the comment text. You can jump to a comment by double-clicking on the corresponding row of the table. The comment text in the buffer can be highlighted as a user option.

Default Tags

A number of default comment tags are supplied, each with a distinctive icon:

Name	Icon
DEBUG
DONE
FIXME
IDEA
NOTE
QUESTION
TODO
XXX
???

You can change the icons associated with a task type by changing the plugin's settings in the Utilities -> Global Options dialog. You can also add your own comment types, using the icons supplied with the plugin or your own custom icons.

Examples

TODO in a Java comment:

// TODO: add some more comments

NOTE in an HTML comment:

<!--
 NOTE: there must be at least one space character before ``NOTE``.
-->

Operation

Whenever the plugin is activated, it will parse a buffer and display formatted comments when the buffer is first loaded, when it is saved, and when you switch buffers or edit panes within a view window. To jump to the text of a comment in the buffer, double-click on the row containing the comment.

By default, the task comments are sorted in ascending order by the line of buffer text in which each comment appears. You can change the sorting arrangement by double-clicking on the header above the column corresponding to the sort criteria. Clicking on the icon or Description column will trigger sorting by the comment tag (such as NOTE or QUESTION), and by buffer line number within a group of identically tagged comment. The text of the comment following the tag will be ignored for sorting purposes. If the column being clicked already corresponds to the existing sort criteria, the direction of the sort is reversed - from ascending to descending, for example. A given sorting arrangement changed in this fashion will persist as long as the TaskList plugin is active.

You can change or delete a comment by right-clicking on a row containing a comment. A popup menu will appear with three selections, Change task tag, Delete task, and Parse buffer.

You can change the type of comment (for example, from IDEA to TODO, or from TODO to DONE, by selecting the Change task tag option. A child popup menu will appear with the text of available comment tags. Clicking on an item will cause the buffer text to be updated to show the new comment tag. The TaskList display will also be updated.

You can delete a task comment by selecting Delete task from the popup menu. You then have the choice between deleting the comment tag only (so the comment text will remain but will not be parsed as a task comment) and deleting the entire comment. This operation will also refresh the TaskList display.

Any change or deletion to a task comment in a text buffer can be reversed using the editor's Undo feature.

The TaskList display is not refreshed with every change made to a buffer. It is updated when a buffer is loaded or saved, when you switch edit panes or buffers in the view window and when you make changes to a task comment using the plugin context (right-click) menu. As a result, if you have made unsaved changes to a buffer, TaskList may not be able to find or change your comment text. You can reparse a buffer at any time using the Task List -> Parse buffer menu item in the Plugins menu (which you can tie to a keyboard shortcut) or by double-clicking on the header row of the TaskList table.

Settings and Options

There are three option pane windows available for user settings from the Utilities -> Global Options dialog.

\s+(tag-name):\s+(.+)$

Known bugs and limitations

The name of a task item must currently be identical to the tag text contained in the regular expression defining the task item. These items may be corrected in a future version.

The current version also does not parse task comments spanning more than one line of buffer text. There is also no facility for serializing the contents of the TaskList display. These features may be added in a future version.

Legal notices

The TaskList plugin and it's documentation are released under the GNU General Public License (either version 2 or any later version, at the user's option). A copy of the GPL is available in the COPYING.txt file in the jEdit distribution.

The TaskList plugin comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY OF ANY KIND; see section 11 and 12 of the GPL for details.

Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.1 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no "Invariant Sections", "Front-Cover Texts" or "Back-Cover Texts", each as defined in the license. A copy of the license is included in the file COPYING.DOC.txt included with the jEdit distribution.

Feedback

Bug reports, comments and suggestions regarding TaskList may be sent to Ollie Rutherfurd at oliver@jedit.org or posted on the jedit-users mailing list (for which membership is required).

Version History