[Orgmode] Converting lists to todo items and back

[Bernt Hansen]

Hi Carsten and list!

I'm finding I outline new tasks quickly with lists like this

,----
| * New Task
|   - [ ] item 1
|   - [ ] item 2
|   - [ ] item 3
`----

and then I want to convert it to TODO items like this:

,----
| * New Task
| ** TODO item 1
| ** TODO item 2
| ** TODO item 3
`----

Is there a function to do that?  If there is any extra context after the
list it should just become part of the subheading (like this)

,----[ from this ]
| * New Task
|   - [ ] item 1
|       detail goes here
|       - more detail
|       - blah
|   - [ ] item 2
|       More detail here
|       
|       end of detail
|   - [ ] item 3        
`----

,----[ to this ]
| * New Task
| ** TODO item 1
|    detail goes here
|    - more detail
|    - blah
| ** TODO item 2
|    More detail here
|       
|    end of detail
| ** TODO item 3        
`----

I don't really care about the indentation on conversion since normally
my lists have little or no detail other than the list item which I want
to turn into a TODO subheading

,----[ and back again ]
| * New Task
|   - [ ] item 1
|       detail goes here
|       - more detail
|       - blah
|   - [ ] item 2
|       More detail here
|       
|       end of detail
|   - [ ] item 3        
`----

Would something like that be useful?

The use case I had for this was I need to test some new functionality
I'm building and I created the list of things to test as the items were
identified.  This was a simple checkbox list.  Later when actually
testing I needed to add more detail (SQL output with test results) which
I wanted to archive to hide the gory details so I converted the
checkboxes to TODO subheadings and added the extra detail as testing
continued.

Regards,
Bernt