task-formats

Task Formats

This page will look at existing examples of task (to-do) formats and assess a model task format type. The idea is to put forward the most important properties for creating a task microformat.

Previous Formats

The Task Microformat may be based loosely on elements found in the VTODO spec. VTODO is part of the RFC2445 iCalendar spec used for describing task items. VTODO is fairly straight-forward, as it doesn't contain any nested entities, and has a fairly small list of properties. Most of these it shares with VEVENT, suggesting a Task Microformat be modeled on hevent in hcalendar, and the ground assumption is that htodo should work just like hevent with respect to these properties. The shared properties in this case might include:

class, created, description, dtstamp, dtstart, geo, last-mod, location, organizer, priority, recurid, seq, statusm summary, uid, url, duration, attach, attendee, categories, comment, contact, exdate, exrule, rstatus, related, resources, rdate, rrule, x-prop

The unique properties of the existing VTODO format are:

• completed The date/time the todo was completed
• due The date/time this todo is due
• percent Integer from 0-100, completion status

As the data types for completed and due are the same as, e.g., dtstart, then the usage should be the same. For example,

<abbr class="due" title="2007-01-01T13:10:05.0Z">January 1, 2007</abbr>

Comparison chart

The following chart maps the terms from existing hCal and hCard implementations to proposed Task values. This is important because if all the properties are introduced to this microformat, then it's possible to map them to a number of different formats. Each column has all the properties and their equivalent in each format. If there is no corresponding property, I have proposed a new property. At the bottom of the list are the unique terms to each format. Dublin Core has basic terms and terms that extend the basic ones.

THIS IS NOT DEFINITIVE, any errors should be corrected. More formats will be added to the list as they are mapped.

<col width="75" /> <col width="98" /> <col width="126" /> <col width="139" />

Section	Name	Class	Values
Date/Time
	Timezone	tzid
	Created	dtstart
	Modified
	Accepted
	Reviewed
	Duration	duration
	Due	dtend
	Multiple dates	rdate
	Recurrence Rule	rrule
	Frequency	freq
	Recurrence Date	rdate
	Reminder	dtrem
People
	Originator	uid
	Assignee	fn n
	Informee	cc
	Group	org
Status
	Status	status	active, disabled, completed
	Progress		%
	Priority	priority	high, medium, low
	Notes
	Privacy	privacy
Details
	Title	description
	Summary	summary
	Category	category
	Tags	meta
	Parent	rel="par"
	Dependency	rel="dep
	Links	rel="url"
	Attachment	rel="enclosure"

See Also

• Task Effort
• Task Examples
• Task Brainstorming
• Task FAQ