Best To-Do List Software?

JojoLinkyBob writes "Greetings, Council of Slashdot. I am curious what everyone here recommends as their favorite organizational software. Specifically, I am trying to find a simple freeware/open-source todo list manager. In the past, I've dabbled with TreePad, Shadow Plan, Mantis, and various virtual sticky- note apps ..all with mixed success. Currently, I'm back to my old-school ways of scribbling my todo's on the back of each Daily Dilbert Calendar page, which sadly means today is June 23 :)"

Comments

data managers

[Anonymous Coward]

there really is only one contender for me, and that's Richard Curnow's tdl, awesome for programmers and just day to day todo lists.

If you're looking for a structured way to store your random bits of data, there'
s treeline, a really simple but rea
lly effective little app.

I'm not really a bells & whistles type of guy, i like my apps streamlined and effective :)

Re:data managers

[thetoastman]

At the risk of starting yet another editor war:

emacs plus:

• calendar mode for diary info (optionally encrypted)
• todo-mode.el for emacs (should come with emacs)

If not, you can get todo-mode.el from any emacs source location.

A proposal has been made to add some simple fontification to the todo-mode.el. You can find the mail message here among other places.

I use it because it works with the calendar-mode, diary mode, and since it's emacs it runs everywhere emacs does.

I know, boring, boring, boring. However, when you have the kitchen sink of editors, you might as well turn on the water.

Omni Outliner!

[viper21]

I really dig Omni Outliner from The Omni Group. It is, of course, for OS X--My platform of choice.

They also have some teriffic charting software, OmniGraffle, that I use to do flowcharts for all of my coding. You guys all do flowcharts, right? :)

-S

Omni

[aarku]

OmniOutliner and OmniGraffle work pretty sweetly for me.

Mozilla Sunbird

[Aliencow]

Still a bit buggy, but with calendar, shared calendar support, publishing through webdav, it has the potential of being as good as iCal !

Re:Low-tech

[nucal]

Using text files is actually not all that bad of an option. A nice alternative to the truly awful Notepad is Metapad which is free and can seemlessly replace Notepad. Among other things it has active hyperlinks, auto indenting and can do a lot of simple reformatting (like caps to lowercase, etc.).

I use ToDoList

[telstar]

ToDoList ... currently on version 3.6.4 is a great To-Do list manager. Incidentally, the site it's offered through (TheCodeProject.com) is a great resource for Windows developers as well.

Re:It's really not a technical problem.

[Lodragandraoidh]

The key with any tool - take CRM tools for example - is to actually take the time to use them on a consistent basis. One of the biggest barriers to consistent use I have seen is the variation of standards and interfaces of the tools that I like.

I think the future will see more XML and RSS based tools that allow you to integrate all of your systems (calendars, todo lists, issue tracking lists, blogs, etc etc) into one interface without regard for proprietary formats. Those companies that do put their eggs on the proprietary format basket will either be run around by smart filters, or wither on the vine as people see the lack of interoperability and go elsewhere.

That is the space where information management will reach a new plateau, imho.

Re:Apple's iCal software

[zhiwenchong]

Spymac is slow, difficult to configure, unreliable and generally ugly. Sure, they give you a 1 GB spymac.com email account, WebDAV space, webspace, iCal hosting etc. but the whole setup lacks finesse and elegance. I wouldn't recommend Spymac anyone except the desperate.

Did I mention it was sloooww?

For free iCal hosting, try icalx.com instead. There exists another free iCal hosting service but I forget the name.

What sort of to-do list?

[Xerp]

It really depends on the sorts of tasks you are handling. If you are, for example, a builder then you will have a critical path and (hopefully ;-) strict deadlines. For something like this a calendar based task scheduler is fine. Things like KOrganizer or Plans could be used.

If there is a great number of tasks with no critical path, for example a call center, then you will want something a little more complicated. You'll need to be able to log a task quickly, give it an urgency, tie it back to a particular caller, be able to assign it, maybe even have a searchable knowledge base. For this area things like OTRS are great.

Then you could be a developer, where critical paths vary daily and tasks need to be assigned to specific modules and versions. The obvious choice here is bugzilla

Desktop or web-based is also a consideration. You may require access from multiple locations; maybe you are an off-site engineer; so that needs to be taken into consideration too.

Ecco URL

[buckminster]

Ecco is still the best. You are correct that it hasn't been updated since 1997, but it's definitely a Win32 application. I've heard rumours that it runs under WINE as well.

Netmanage essentially abandoned this product although you can still download for free from their ftp site:
ftp://ftp.netmanage.com/support/pub/utilities/EC40 1/

Users manual should be included as well.

This is way more than just a simple outline program. Think unlimited relational outlines connected by user definable columns. All fully integrated with the calendar and address book.

As I contemplate switching to various other platforms this is still the one application I cannot live without. No other outliner/pim comes close to ECCO.

Re:what's awful about notepad?

[Jimmy_B]

It's the only text editor I've ever used which doesn't read Unix-style linefeeds. That alone is enough to make it unusable. It doesn't have multi-level undo, which makes it easy to toast your data. It's notorious for screwing up file extensions when you're saving. Some versions of it are unable to open large files. It is completely devoid of the many useful and necessary features which other text editors.

Consider Full-Fledged PIMs like Zoot

[Akilesh Rajan]

There are some very interesting pieces of software out there that combine task management with personal information databases -- places to store bits of information collected from documents, web pages, and so on. Some go far beyond the information organizing capabilities of Outlook and other standard personal information managers (PIMs).

One such piece of software is a cult-hit, Zoot. See reviews here and here. Find out more at the Yahoo Group for it, which also happens to have excellent lists of other excellent but often underappreciated PIM software.

Also consider web-based task managers like Yahoo Calendar. The advantage is that they are easily accessible from anywhere and there's no need for backups. Yahoo task management also syncs with a lot of other stuff, I think.

Re:the cutting edge of TODO list technology

[archen]

Ah, that's way too much work. Mine is "~/todo", so I don't need to hit shift twice ;)

alias todo='vim + ~/todo'

So there =P You also might want to look at the "+/{pat}" command line option for vim. Then you could search for the '[ ]' which would autoskip to the first task you don't have done.

OmniOutliner, hnb, vi

[strudeau]

I love OmniOutliner for OS X. I also used hnb (Hierarchical Notebook) which is a commandline outliner, for awhile. Otherwise vi/emacs/notepad.exe/whatever is great.