ability to specify fields displayed, and their formatting

[pcause]

Right how the display of tasks that have been queried displays the full task as entered. It would be nice to add an option to the task query to specify what fields are displayed in which order using a formatting string. For example:

''' tasks
not done
sort by due
display "* {due} :: {tags} | {description} "
'''

which would give a display like:

• 2022-09-30:: #next,#school | this is a school task
• 2022-10-01:: #home | take out the trash

and perhaps if you just pass through items in the format string, folks can add markdown and css to get fancy displays. Another option would be to use the word table and then the format string. In this case you'd generate a markdown table, the headers would be the field names and each row has the data. Difference here is that if you use table you specify fields and content with | between them . For example:

table "{due}| <span class=tags">{tags}| {description}"

[pcause]

yes, you could use dataview but it would be easier to do in tasks and not have to use/learn dataview.

[claremacrae]

Hi @pcause, thank you for the suggestion.

When I read the subject line of this, I immediate thought to point you to the Layout docs, which controls which fields are displayed.

But your idea is more sophisticated than that, and it would be help people to understand the suggestion - and up-vote it - if the summary were more specific.

I've added to this a label indicating it is about rendering of tasks. If you click on that label in this issue, it provides a helpful link so some more or less related suggestions can be found.

[pcause]

thanks, clare. and thanks for all the great work you do on this plugin.

[claremacrae]

Might 'ability to specify fields displayed , and their formatting' be a fair summary, do you think?
I don't think formatting quite captures the full idea, but am struggling to find a better word.

In the tasks-x fork of this project, there is a Template Rendering feature that might give some ideas to an eventual implementation of this.
https://sytone.github.io/obsidian-tasks-x/3-getting-started/template-rendering/

[pcause]

yes, think that is a fair summary and I changed the title

[claremacrae]

Super - thank you!