Tasks Query Does Not Recognize 1. [ ]

[hyaray]

Not Recognize 1. [ ] but - [ ] is OK.
will it be fixed later?? thanks!

[aubreyz]

It is not supposed to recognise 1.
This is not standard markdown format. So nothing to fix.

And in any case it is not clear what a numbered task would mean

[schemar]

Tasks will only support “markdown tasks” (- [ ]), not “ordered tasks”.

[huyz]

That's a shame.

We all know there is no such thing as "standard markdown".
Markdown was extended by different parties in order to support task lists, which were not part of the original Markdown.
I don't see why a new (innovative? bold?) party couldn't now extend to support ordered tasks.

Since this is an Obsidian plugin, one could even make the argument that what's important is to support the flavor of Markdown that Obsidian supports. And in that case, note that Obsidian renders ordered checklists quite well:

- [ ] Figure out wormholes
  - [ ] Call @arfon
  - [ ] Research ([docs](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wormhole#Time_travel))
  - [ ] Build prototype #15
  - [ ] Test run #43 @world-domination/time-travel
- [ ] ...?
- [ ] Profit!

1. [ ] Figure out wormholes
      1. [ ] Call @arfon
      1. [ ] Research ([docs](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wormhole#Time_travel))
      1. [ ] Build prototype #15
      1. [ ] Test run #43 @world-domination/time-travel
1. [ ] ...?
1. [ ] Profit!

is rendered as:

It seems that quite a few of us have found Obsidian's extension of Markdown to be quite useful to distinguish between tasks that can be done in any order and tasks that can be done out of order. So why not support plugin users who have decided to make Markdown even more useful to them?

[huyz]

Another example of support: delashum/obsidian-checklist-plugin#96

[claremacrae]

Once #953 (tasks in callouts and block quotes being supported) is merged, I would not be opposed to a pull request on this, if anyone would like to contribute it.

[AnnaKornfeldSimpson]

Does Obsidian's built-in search, which has operators for finding tasks in general, as well as completed or uncompleted tasks specifically, find those tasks that are in ordered lists? That would be an important prerequisite here.

[huyz]

Yes, I tried task:"", task-todo:"" and task-done:"" and they work as expected:

[geoelectric]

If they use the same code for recognition it's probably the same issue:

Toggle Task Done mangles tasks with numbered items by putting an extra unordered mark in as if it weren't a list item at all, making it a double-marked - 1., and then toggles it between - [ ] 1. and - [x] 1.

If the recognition is extended to all legal Obsidian markdown (which I strongly agree it should be, if it's going to be an Obsidian plugin) then this behavior also should be touched up to toggle between 1. [ ] and 1. [x].

If it's not going to be extended, I feel this behavior should still be looked at since it causes the behavior of "Toggle Task Done" to diverge from "Toggle Checklist" when in theory it's a drop-in replacement. Either it should ignore numbered lists or change them to unordered lists (neither of which sounds great, hence thinking it should handle them natively instead).

[claremacrae]

@geoelectric The above is fixed in 1.20.0, just released.

[AnnaKornfeldSimpson]

I have converted this to a discussion since Clare said that it might be possible to accept a PR for it now!

[claremacrae]

I have converted this to a discussion since Clare said that it might be possible to accept a PR for it now!

Philosophical comment, thinking out loud.... Not for action on this ticket 😄

For future reference - and it doesn't need changing back again - the creator of this project intended:

• Issues to be for bugs
• Discussion/Ideas to be for new features.

So whether a PR might be accepted wasn't intended to be a factor in the location of the ticket.

(It would get a bit confusing - and there would be lots of duplcicate data when searching the repo - if text got duplicated by converting between types every time a decision changed on whether to do something or not, or someone new suddenly offered help on something...)

Sometimes there is a thin line between the two, though... Like, it could be said this is:

• from a programmer perspective, it's a new feature, as it was never intended originally to support this behaviour
• from a user perspective, it's a bug, as it doesn't what users expected..

And expectations of behaviour can change over time as Obsidian evolves.

[claremacrae]

Wow. @BrianKmdy had very kindly created a PR for an implementation of this: #1363

If I understand it correctly, tasks in numbered lists would now be find. And they would be rendered as un-numbered lists.

I wrote a few initial quick thought about the rendering - and how hard it would be to do differently - in #1363 (comment).

[claremacrae]

Hi, just to note that Tasks 1.20.0 includes the above PR, so tasks in numbered lists are found.

Note that they are rendered as bullet lists in tasks blocks.

See https://obsidian-tasks-group.github.io/obsidian-tasks/getting-started/#limitations-and-warnings and scroll down a little to the section on 'numbered lists'.