#70 Support for ToDo lists in ReStructured Text

[Ingo Keck]

Hi all,
Sorry if this has been brought up already, but I did not find anything here or in the mailing lists (though there are a lot hits for "todo" in links, so I may have missed it).

It would be great for using ReStructured Text for markup if it would also support lists with check-boxes like ToDo lists. The format could be like bullet lists, just using '[ ]' or '[x]' instead of '-', i.e.

[ ] first item not checked
[x] second item checked

I know that I can emulate this with a field list like
:[ ]: first item not checked
but the semantic would be different, as field lists expect unique item names.

Could this be added or are there reasons to do it differently or not at all?

Background: I need a well defined, human readable markup language for everyday use and scientific publishing. ReStructured Text mostly fits the bill, but this is one of the things that always comes up in discussions.

[Günter Milde]

Thank you for your suggestion.
Adding/extending rST syntax is a complex issue because we need to support this for all output formats and we need developer consensus. I am afraid this will not happen quickly.

For the time beeing: There is no limitation that prevents list items with the same field name,
thus the following works:

.. class:: todo-list

:[ ]: first item not checked
:[ ]: item 2 not checked
:[x]: item 3 checked
:[x]: item 4 checked
:[ ]: item 5 not checked

With the HTML5 writer, you can precede the list with a class
directive as in the example and add a CSS rule to leave out the trailing
":" in the output.

[Günter Milde]

See the attached example for various alternatives to mark up TODO lists.

[Günter Milde]

There are now a FAQ entry and an example for TODO lists with rST.