yet another todo editing system

[Joe Corneli]

Dear SIRS and MADAMS,

In the spirit of leaping before looking, I wrote a program that I call
"todo" in my ever-increasing amounts of Free time this past year.  The
name "todo" is somewhat ironic, because, like any good todo-list editor,
you can do all sorts of things with it; one could say with sincerity
that its not fit for any particular purpose.

And yet... I have found it quite useful for keeping track of all kinds
of things, including my things-to-do.  I've also used it to make a
prototype hypertext math dictionary.  If I had an iPod, I could use it
to put these things on my iPod -- but I don't have an iPod.  I've put
some examples on my webpage instead.  There are currently more features
internal to the program than are exported to HTML through the exporting
feature (in particular, there is an "up" feature that is more
interesting than the "up" feature used in standard web/file browsers).

To clarify the above, I should mention that 99% of the point of this
program is that lists can contain links to other lists.  If you've seen
screenshots of the iPod in action, or if you have an iPod, then you know
the sort of thing I'm talking about here.

So, ok, its time to try giving my program away.  Here is the URL:

  www.ma.utexas.edu/~jcorneli/no_index.html/todo/todo.html

No doubt I haven't gotten all the bugs worked out of it, and certainly I
haven't added all of the features that I think should be there.  I have
tested the program out on several systems and it seems to work - but who
knows!  Its time for other people to try it out.  But another reason I
haven't continued to press ahead is that I realized a while ago that
this program would be much better if it was an Emacs package. (Which is
why I am writing to this list!)  I'm not even sure that there isn't
something else already in Emacs that does more-or-less exactly what my
program does. Recently I've checked out a few of the todo-like modes and
haven't seen anything quite like my program, though there is certainly
some similar stuff -- and if I do decide to port the program to Emacs
Lisp, there will be some nice things to draw on there.

In the mean time, I would appreciate it if you could tell me what you
think. Is there already an Emacs package out there that does what my
program does?  Probably some combination (eg. todo mode and hyperbole)
would do it.  But maybe my version of things has potential on its own.
After all, it is simple.  Would you like to see an Emacs Lisp port?

Joe Corneli

PS.  I have what I think to be a fairly clever name for the Lisp port 
in mind (if I do write one) -- the new name is "Todl".