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Standard GTD File Format, Anyone?
dew | Oct 23 2006
I've been thinking that those of us developing GTD software ought to agree on some sort of common file format that our apps can export to and import from. I don?t expect that every (or even any) apps would natively read and write this format during day-to-day operations. The app I?m working on is based on the Mozilla platform, so I?m using RDF/XML to save GTD data. I don?t think I?m going to want to switch that out anytime soon, but I would love to provide an export/import mechanism so that folks won?t hesitate to experiment with my app, knowing they can easily get their data in and out of it. I imagine some sort of XML that?s not as ugly as RDF/XML would be a good idea, but another plain text format would work too. Ideally, it would be human and machine readable. Given the nature of the data, I don?t imagine this would be a problem. Also the format would need to lend itself well to various ?interpretations? of the data. Some programs out there deal with due dates, and others do not. Some programs deal with nested projects and others do not. It would be best if any given program could easily extract whatever data it needed and safely ignore the other bits. For example, the app I?m working on will not support due dates but it should still be able to import actions with due dates assigned to them by another program. Just wanted to plant a seed here. If anyone knows about a GTD file format that?s already being developed or used, please do tell. 6 Comments
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 I'd like the keep this...Submitted by pkahle on June 13, 2007 - 6:04am.
I'd like the keep this alive, or bring it back from the dead. If anything's happened in the meantime, let me know. Why hard-code context the different clients don't need? Wouldn't the simplest way to do it be something like: <context name="Errands" /> <!-- if the software uses a special prefix for contexts, strip it. gtdgmail uses "C:", others use "@", the context (heh) is in the element name --> <project name="PreventingToothDecay"> <description>End Tooth Rot Today!</description> </project> <action project="PreventingToothDecay" context="Errands"> <name>Buy new toothbrush</name> <description>A longer description</description> </action> Optionally, you could use priorities, as a separate type, and tags, like referenced earlier in the thread, and maybe a data element to represent microformats or other data. What are people using for this? I would be just as happy to use d3 universally, but I'd like to be able to get reminders on my phone, and outlook at work, and it just doesn't support that. » POSTED IN:
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