popthings

iOS and command line tool to import a TaskPaper template with placeholders into Things by Cultured Code

Installation

On macOS

Run popthings directly with uv, without installing it first:

uvx popthings template.taskpaper

Alternatively, install popthings using pip:

pip install popthings

On iOS

Use Pythonista to execute the script. Download the popthings.py file to the "This iPhone/iPad" location. The script cannot be on iCloud if you want to use the Share Sheet Extension. To add popthings to the Share Extension shortcut, add the popthings.py script as a new shortcut in the Pythonista settings. See the Pythonista Documentation for more details.

To add a button on the Today Widget, use the following entry for the SHORTCUT variable in the Examples/Widget/Launcher.py file:

{
    'title': 'PopThings',
    'url': 'pythonista3://popthings.py?action=run',
    'color': '#5e96ff',
    'icon': 'iow:checkmark_24'
},

Usage

popthings supports placeholder replacement, headers and checklist items. Date parsing is done by Things itself, so anything Things supports is also supported here.

• The indentation must be done with Tabs, which is the normal TaskPaper behavior.
• Placeholders must be defined on the second line of the file. They must have a $ prefix and be space-separated.
• The @start and @due tags expect a value and will be used for the "when" and "deadline" attributes of a project or task. All other tags are passed through and their values are ignored.
• A project under a project is a considered a heading. It can't have notes. Tasks under it can be indented or not, which is more flexible than the TaskPaper format.
• A task under a task is a checklist item.

Here is a packing list template with 3 placeholders:

Prepare luggage for trip to $destination: @start($start)
    $start $due $destination
    Before leaving:
        - Find good place for dinner @research
            Don't forget to check NYT's "36 hours in ..."
    Packing:
        - Passport @due($due)
        - Clothes @due($due)
            - Pants
            - T-shirts
    Last minute: @due($due)
        - Set thermostat to travel mode @due($due) @home
        - Water plants @due($due) @home

To import the template on the Mac, pass the TaskPaper filename to the popthings executable. If there are any placeholders, you'll be prompted for their value.

uvx popthings templatex-travel.taskpaper
Start value? 2018-09-01
Due value? 2018-09-10
Destination value? Paris

Here's the result of parsing the template above.

On iOS, you can use popthings via:

• The Share Sheet to share the content of a TaskPaper document from any application.
• From Pythonista or from the Today Widget where you'll be prompted to pick a file using the File picker.

In both cases, Pythonista will prompt you for the placeholder values if there are any.

Known limitations

• The TaskPaper file must start with a project.
• If a header has a comment, the previous task or project is going to end up with that comment.

Making a Release

1. Bump the version in popthings.py
2. Update the changelog, link the versions.
3. Commit and tag with version number. Push tags. Update the release on GitHub.
4. Build the source and wheel distributions with uv build
5. Test upload to PyPI test with twine upload --repository-url https://test.pypi.org/legacy/ dist/*
6. Create a temporary environment mktmpenv and test install with pip install --index-url https://test.pypi.org/simple/ popthings
7. If everything looks good, upload for real with twine upload dist/*