Using ToDo List

ToDo List is organized around the notion of ToDo List documents, each of which can contain any number of items. The number of documents that you can have open at once is limited only by memory.

As a convenience, ToDo List will optionally remember which documents you had open (along with the location and size of their windows) and automatically reopen them each time you launch ToDo List. It will also automatically save changes on a regular interval or when you close the document if desired.  See the Preferences section for information on how to set these and other preferences.

One of the most convenient ways to use ToDo List is to have it automatically launch when you startup your Macintosh.  To do this first make an alias of the ToDo List application.  Then place the alias in the Startup Items folder inside the System Folder.  

Since ToDo List uses very little memory, and won’t slow down other programs while in the background, you can safely choose to leave it open.

The ToDo List Window
Almost all actions in ToDo List can be invoked from either a menu or directly from the window. This section goes over the window and points out the places that you can click or drag to manipulate the item list. 

The exact appearance of each ToDo List window depends on the preferences that have been selected for that document, however here is an example:

The small calendar across the top of the window is optional (see the Preferences section). 

You can shift the months displayed backward or forward by clicking on the arrows to either side of the calendar. If you hold down the Option, Command, or Control key while clicking, the calendar will shift by one year instead of one month. If you hold the mouse button down on either of the arrow buttons the months will continue to scroll in that direction until the button is released.  Initially the calendar begins with the current month, but ToDo List will remember where it was left when the document is closed.

As a short cut, you can double-click on a date in the calendar to create a new item with that date. If the calendar is being displayed, but dates are not being used, in the current document, a double-click creates a new item with the current date. If you single-click on a date, the item list will be scrolled to the  first item that falls on or after that date.

Most of the commands in the Item menu apply to the currently selected item in the list. You can select items by clicking on a single item or clicking and dragging to select several items. If you hold down the shift key while clicking, ToDo List will extend the range of items selected. If you hold down the command key (⌘) while clicking on an item, it is added to the selection (allowing for discontinuous selections). Since all of the selected items might not be visible at one time, ToDo List shows you how many items out of the total number are currently selected (e.g. "1/8 Items").

If you have one or more items selected, you can drag to move them to another location in the list. If you hold the option key down you will copy the selections to the new location.  As you drag a dark line will follow the mouse indicating where the items will be inserted if you release the mouse. The date and priority of the items will change if necessary to match the new location. Note that the selection you drag can be discontinuous. See Drag and Drop below.

If a single item is currently selected, the up and down arrow keys on the keyboard will shift the selection up or down one item, scrolling the list if necessary. The Page Up and Page Down keys on extended keyboards scroll the list up or down a window at a time.  Pressing the Enter or Return key with exactly one item selected will edit that item.  Pressing the Escape (Esc) key will cancel the current selection.

When ToDo List is considering a click on an item, the item area is divided up into two or three zones. The full left edge of the item (including the area below the check box for a multi-line item) is the check box area. Clicking in this area reverses (toggles) the current status of the item. Items with a check mark are considered "finished".  If there is audio with an item then clicking on the speaker icon will play the sound. If you want to stop playing the sound press command-period
(⌘-.). Clicking on the item text selects it; double clicking brings up the Edit Item dialog.

ToDo List windows have no horizontal scroll bar because the program automatically wraps the text of each item to fit the current width. If the text for an item is too long to fit on one line, it is automatically continued on the next. ToDo List uses the international guides built into the Macintosh to determine the word boundaries for breaking lines.

Creating and Editing Items
There are five ways to add new items to a ToDo List document:  Insert New Item..., from the Item menu, Record New Memo... from the Sound menu, the Paste command from the Edit menu, dragging items between windows and by double clicking in an empty part of the list window. If the list is displaying dates and you double-click on a visible date, the new item dialog will default to that date.

Insert New Item... brings up the following dialog box:

Each item can contain up to 255 characters of text. The text can contain carriage returns to add addition line breaks. By default (see the Preferences section) you insert a carriage return in the text by typing Return while holding down the Option, Control or Shift key. Pressing Return without any of these modifiers is the same as clicking on the OK button. The OK button is only enabled when the item isn’t empty (e.g. you have a recorded memo or some text in the item).

ToDo List also associates a creation date and last modification date with each item. If dates are being displayed in the document (see Preferences), the item is also given a due date. The first time you create an item, the date pop-up menus will default to today’s date. After that, they default to the last date used. You can click on the Today button at any time to reset the popup menus to today’s date.  The order of the month, day and year popups in the Edit Item dialog is determined by your System.  You can change their order by changing the way dates are displayed in the Date & Time control panel.

If you check the Priority Item checkbox, the item will be displayed in red and underlined. Priority items are inserted before the non-priority items for the same date. The priority status of an item (or items) can also be changed with the Toggle Priority Status menu command.

If you check the Finished Item checkbox, the item will be displayed with a checkmark. The finished status can also be changed by clicking the checkbox in the ToDo List window or by the Toggle Finished Status command.

You can record a memo to go with the item by clicking on the Record button. The standard recording dialog will appear:

The number of seconds you can record is determined by the amount of available memory. If you want to record longer memos, increase the amount of memory allocated to ToDo List (Get Info... in the Finder).

If you click on the Save button, a new item is created with default text indicating the date and time when the memo was recorded and the length of the recording in seconds. You can edit it like any other item.

You can select one or more items in any ToDo List document and Cut or  Copy them to the clipboard. You can also copy text from any other application to the clipboard for pasting in ToDo List. While most commands in ToDo List work the same way as they do in other applications, the Paste command works a little differently and deserves a quick explanation.

In ToDo List the Paste command only inserts the new items even if items are current selected (other applications would replace the selected items), and items in the clipboard are inserted according to their dates, priority and number of days overdue (if they have them) or at the current default date. If dates aren't being displayed in the document, the items get pasted at the end of the other priority items or at the end of the list. The items that were pasted are left selected so as to see where they were inserted.

If the clipboard contains plain text (probably from another application), it is pasted in as a single new non-priority item with the default date. If the text was longer than 255 characters, it is truncated to fit. Similarly, when you cut or copy items in ToDo List and paste them in another application, they paste as plain text. ToDo List does format the text with line breaks and spaces to make it look somewhat like the original items.

Printing ToDo Lists
For those occasions when you have to be away from your Macintosh, you can print the contents of any of your ToDo List documents and take them with you. The format of the printout depends on the current Page Setup settings. If it is set up to print a vertical page, ToDo List will print using four mini- pages on each page of paper. If it is set up to print the page horizontally, ToDo List will print two mini-pages of items to a single page of paper. 

When you select the Print menu command, you’ll be presented with the following dialog box:

You can set the title that will be printed at the top of each mini-page (it defaults to the document name) and the either print all of the items in the document or only those whose dates are within the given range. Note that even it dates aren’t being displayed in the document window, all items still have a date associated with them, and it will be used to determine which items are printed if you select the From option.

Audio Memos
  It’s important to remember that recorded memos require about 5K of disk space for each second of sound, so they can add significantly to the size of a ToDo List document. In order to limit the amount of memory needed by ToDo List, memos are recorded and played from memory, but are otherwise only stored on disk. Therefore, the ToDo List application only needs enough free memory to hold just the single largest memo, but enough disk space to hold all of the memos in the list. If you plan to make extensive use of memos, you might want to increase ToDo List’s memory allocation  (Get Info... in the Finder). and make sure that you have lots of disk space available.

Note that since any changes you make to a ToDo List document aren’t saved until you select the “Save” menu item, memos are actually stored in an invisible temporary file and automatically copied into the actual ToDo List document only when the document is saved. Therefore, lists with large numbers of memos will take longer to save than lists without memos. Also, while the document is actually being saved, you’ll momentarily need free space on your disk equal to about twice the size of document.  When you’re playing a memo, you can cancel at anytime by pressing command-period (⌘-.). This is especially useful if you mistakenly click on the speaker icon for a long memo item. 

Drag and Drop
  ToDo List includes complete support for Apple’s Drag Manager.  This means that you can drag selected items within a list, between ToDo List document windows, or even to/from other applications that support the Drag Manager (including the desktop).  This feature makes it especially easy to keep your lists organized.

Using dragging in ToDo List is a very intuitive way to move items around.  First, select the item or items that you want to move (you can select a range of items or even multiple items that aren’t next to each other).  Then click the mouse while over one of the selected items, drag to the new destination  and release.  While you’re dragging, ToDo List will follow the mouse with a thick black insertion line that indicates where the items will be inserted if you release the mouse button.  If you’re dragging the items within the list, they will be deleted from their old location(s) and inserted at the new location.  If you hold the Option key down while dragging within the list, the items will be copied.  

When you drag items to a new location in a list, if necessary they will be modified to suit the new location.  For instance, if you drag an item from one date to another, it’s date is automatically changed.  Since priority items must always appear before non-priority items within each date, the priority of a dragged item will also be modified to match its new location (e.g. drag a non-priority item in front of a priority item and it will become a priority item).

If you’re dragging items to another list or another application, by default the items are copied and inserted at the new location without changing the source list.  If you want to move the items to another list, hold down the command (⌘) key during the drag and the items will be deleted from the source list and inserted into the destination.  If you change your mind, dragging can be undone, just select the Undo Drag Item(s) menu command from the Edit menu when either the source or destination window is active.  

If you drag items from ToDo List to another application, the result is the same as if you copied the items and pasted them into the other program.  ToDo List automatically converts the items into a plain text represen- tation that closely approximates their appearance in ToDo List.  However you may choose to copy just the item text via a setting in the Document Settings dialog. Any sounds that were associated with the dragged items are lost when the items are dragged to another application or the desktop. 

If you use other applications that also support the Drag Manager, dragging can be a very convenient way to add new items. Just select some text in that application that you want for a new item, drag it over top of a ToDo List window and drop it into place.  You get a new item with nothing more than a quick movement of the mouse!  When you drag text from another application into ToDo List, any font styling information will be lost, and the item will be clipped to a maximum of 255 characters.

If you have System 7.5, then the Drag Manager has been automatically installed.  If you’re using an earlier version of System 7, then you’ll need to install the Drag Manager if you want to be able to drag items between windows or to/from other applications.  The Drag Manager is available from on-line services that carry Apple’s software as well as FTP sites.  At the time this was written, it was available on “ftp.support.apple.com” in the directory:
pub/Apple SW Updates/US/Macintosh/System Software/Other System Software/
as the file: Mac Drag and Drop (1.1).hqx

This file is a complete development kit for Drag and Drop,  so it will include a lot of files that you can simply ignore.  If you’re running System 7 Pro, you’ll only need the extension called Drag and Drop.  If you’re running System 7.0 or System 7.1, you’ll also need the extension called Dragging Enabler if you want to drag items to/from other applications.  Only  System 7.5 supports dragging items to the desktop to create clippings files.

Speaking Items
ToDo List will also speak items from your to do lists for you.  This can be a convenient way to review what you have to do for the day while you’re moving around your office getting organized.  Just select Read Today’s Item(s) from the Sound menu or press ⌘-R and then you’re free to move around while ToDo List tells you want you’ve got planned for the day.  If you want ToDo List to stop speaking, you can abort by pressing command-period (⌘-.) at anytime.

You can select the voice ToDo List uses to speak in the Document Settings dialog.  You can choose a different voice for each document to make it easy to distinguish one list from another when you’re listening without looking at the screen.  You should note that most of the voices provided by Apple require substantially more memory than the default voice when in use.  If ToDo List doesn’t have enough memory available when you ask it to read the list with a particular voice, it will try to use the default voice.

ToDo List uses the Speech Manager to speak the items in your list, so this feature is only available if it has been installed.  If you’re running System 7.5, the Speech Manager was automatically installed for you.  If you’re running an earlier version of System 7, you’ll have to install it yourself. The Speech Manager should be available from on-line services that carry Apple’s software (such as America Online, AppleLink, and eWorld) as well as FTP sites. For instance, at the time this was written, it was available on “ftp.support.apple.com” at: 
pub/Apple SW Updates/US/Macintosh/System Software/Text to Speech/

There are multiple files, download the following file first for a description of what’s available: TTS - Read Me First.txt