Tmux Popup For Fast Access to Task List
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Last edited: $Date: 2020/09/27 13:25:14 $
Tmux Popup
A rather new function in Tmux is the so called Popup
Window.
This window is a floating window that functions like
an overlay above your session. With a few lines in
your .tmux.conf this can be used to have a efficient
and fast access to anything you want in your Tmux
pane.
I use it to have quick access to my task list.
Taskwarrior and Vimwiki Diary
My method of managing my tasks consists of two
different applications:
* Taskwarrior
* Vimwiki Diary
### Taskwarrior
I keep my task list in Taskwarrior. This is a great
application with clients for several environments,
like Linux, FreeBSD and OpenBSD. Also there is a
client for Android.
Taskwarrior can be used as a stand alone
application, or as a client-server solution. I use
the client-server solution. For this I run the taskd
daemon on a BeagleBone Black running OpenBSD.
All the clients sync to this server, keeping every
task list up to date and in sync.
I use the "task calendar" format to get a quick
overview the tasks to perform. For this, I added the
line
calendar.details=full
to my .taskrc file.
### Vimwiki Diary
I use the Vimwiki Diary for my Most Important Tasks
of the current day.
For this I use the checkbox function of Vimwiki.
This looks like this:
# Monday 28 September 2020
## Most Important Tasks
- [ ] Write a posting about Tmux
- [ ] Do something else
- [ ] Always have a list of three
Most of the time I set my Most Important Tasks for
the day one day before, so in the afternoon of the
current day I edit my Vimwiki Diary "tomorrow" page
and put those tasks in there. (You open the diary
page for the next day with Leader-w Leader-m).
For more information about this, see the book
Organize Tomorrow Today, written by Jason Selk.
If haven't set my Most Important Tasks for the
current day, I usually add some in the morning.
I aim to have three Most Important Tasks defined,
and create a list with three tasks, each with a
checkbox.
During the day I can check what my Most Important
Tasks are, and if necessary add one or two things
that I must not forget to do before the end of the
day.
Start Tmux with Xsession
I start Tmux through my .xsessionrc, and have the
following lines in it:
The 'workpad' session is my default session. This is
started, populated with some windows. When the i3
window manager is started, it opens a terminal
screen attached to this tmux workpad session.
The 'popup' session is for the Tmux Popup Window :)
Tmux popup
The following lines in my .tmux.conf file setup the
functionality with the popup window:
The switches -w and -h are not needed, but create a
somewhat larger popup window, which is great for the
Taskwarrior output.
As you can see, my current keybindings are:
- shift-T for Taskwarrior
- v for the Vimwiki Diary
The keybinding 't' is already used for blanking your
Tmux window and displaying a digital clock in it, a
very helpful function when you quickly need some
privacy. This has become part of my muscle memory
and I didn't want to change that, hence the captital
T for taskwarrrior.
At the initial setting up of the popup for the
Vimwiki Diary I was not very creative with defining
the most easy to remember keybinding and just choose
one that was not occupied. I just used the
Compiling Tmux
On my private OpenBSD laptop, Tmux comes with the
popup functionality. Unfortunately, in FreeBSD and
in Debian Buster the Tmux version is too old and
does not support the Popup window.
My $DaytimeJob-Laptop is a Debian machine and I
really like the efficiency of the popup window, so I
compiled the current version of Tmux on that machine
:)
