Why are tasks with custom statuses styled differently?

[Cito]

Sorry for my ignorance. I'm currently trying out the new status feature - thanks to everyone for working on this.

I noticed that the text of tasks with a custom status is shown with a different style - bold and greyed out. What's the intention behind this? Should these tasks be emphasized (by making them bolder) or deemphasized (by making them greyed out)? Why does this happen independently of the actual status? For instance, I would understand that a cancelled task is shown greyed out, while a task under progress is boldened. But they are all both boldened and greyed out at the same time.

I'm using the recommended CSS snippet with the default theme.

[claremacrae]

Hi @Cito, yes I'd wondered the same thing.

Have you seen this page page - it shows how you can get rid of the grey.

https://obsidian-tasks-group.github.io/obsidian-tasks/how-to/style-custom-statuses/#customising-the-custom-style-style-settings-plugin

It shows how you have some control over the styling in the recommended CSS Snippet.

It doesn't offer a way to turn off bold.
Close to the release I discovered that I had done this manually myself in the test vault and so reverted that change.
See 8758c34

If you don't like the bold, I would suggest making that same (reverted) edit in your copy.

Hope this helps a bit.

[Cito]

Thanks @claremacrae , I missed that setting plugin. It now makes a bit more sense, since it allows to use different colors depending on the status type.

Still, I find it a bit confusing that the default todo status (empty box) is not styled at all, while all other status values change the style of the text (i.e. bold by default and grey or colorful depending on the setting). Looking at the CSS, I see that this is even intentional - the snippet uses a :not([data-task=" "]) selector, i.e. does not style the empty checkbox tasks. I wonder what the reasoning behind this was, because to me it would make more sense and look better if all tasks are styled the same (either all bold or all normal). I have manually removed the font-weight: bold; setting now, as you suggested.

[claremacrae]

Still, I find it a bit confusing that the default todo status (empty box) is not styled at all, while all other status values change the style of the text (i.e. bold by default and grey or colorful depending on the setting). Looking at the CSS, I see that this is even intentional - the snippet uses a :not([data-task=" "]) selector, i.e. does not style the empty checkbox tasks. I wonder what the reasoning behind this was, because to me it make more sense and would look better if all tasks are style the same (either all bold or all normal). I have manually removed the font-weight: bold; setting now, as you suggested.

Ah, I think I may know why the default todo status is not styled - at least, based on this comment (which admittedly is old) it sounds like Tasks is doing this because of how Obsidian works.

obsidian-tasks/src/TaskLineRenderer.ts

Line 85 in ccb3b8d

li.setAttribute('data-task', task.status.symbol.trim()); // Trim to ensure empty attribute for space. Same way as obsidian.

Rendering is going to get a little more flexible/amazing/harder-to-explain soon, with this amazing PR, which will allow you more flexibility in how Tasks renders...

#1519

[Cito]

li.setAttribute('data-task', task.status.symbol.trim());

Still confused, since when I check with the dev tools, the data-task attribute is set to " " (blank), not to an empty string. And it's a div, not a li. It seems there are a few things I don't understand here. Need to look into this again when I have more time.

[claremacrae]

This option in Style Settings reverts the text back to plain text for me: