edfn Core Specification

Tasks

A task describes an action to be done by the user and is represented by a descriptive text: the title. This is the only information required from the user for describing the task.

The deadline field is the date when the task must be finished. The user may leave this field empty.

State and Actions

edfn core specification state diagram

A task has a state. Newly added task are always in state Open/Waiting.

The user can create a task to bring it into existance.

She can either be finish or cancel an existing task. In both cases the task is said to be closed.

Views

Open Tasks List

The application must allow the user to manage tasks via the Open Task List. It consists of a list of open tasks in the following order:

  1. Tasks with deadline ordered by deadline in ascending order.
  2. Tasks without deadline

The open task report should mark the tasks in the list in the following way:

  1. Tasks with a deadline before the current date as overdue.
  2. Tasks where the deadline is the current date as due.
  3. Tasks with a deadline after the current date as on time.

Tasks without deadline are not marked up in a special way.

Ordering within the first group (urgent tasks) or within a specific deadline date is not specified, but the order should be preserved across application invocation.

Closed Tasks List

The closed tasks list is optional. If the application does not store closed tasks the closed tasks cannot be created anyway.

The order of the tasks in the closed task report is not specified in the edfn core specification.

Task Storage

Requirements

Tasks are stored in a data source for persistence. Applications supporting the edf core specification only need to store open tasks.

Applications are allowed to manage multiple data sources and to allow the user to only show a subset of them. The ordering and markup of the Open Tasks List applies in any case to all tasks of the subset.

External Representation

The task file is formatted as comma separated values (CSV) with comma (,) as field separator and double quotes (") for quoting of strings which include quotes or commas. The character encoding is utf-8 with Unix line ending (LF). Applications must be able to read task files with DOS line endings (CR LF).

The first line of a task file contains the seven following column header labels in exactly the listed order:

Title,Deadline,Effort,Status,Assigned,Not before,Modified

For the edfn core only the our columns

Title,Deadline,Effort,Status

are relevant, the others must be exported as empty strings.

Author: Georg Lehner | Created: 2020-09-30 Wed 23:28 | Updated: 2024-02-12 Tue 22:30