Different checkbox types

Features & ideas
1

Hi, y’all! Pretty new to Inkdrop but loving it so far. There’s just one sticking point that’s above my paygrade.

I’m hoping someone would be interested in building a plugin to style different types of checkboxes for different task statuses, e.g.:

- [ ] open task
- [x] completed task
- [@] delegated
- [<] scheduled
- [>] deferred

With different types of tasks, I could search based on when and how they need to be done. When doing focused work, I can narrow it down to - [ ]. When following-up with different members of my team, - [@]. Looking for tasks that were on the back burner, but now I have time? - [>]. etc.

I understand this would probably cause issues for the progress bar, but for my purposes at least, anything other than - [ ] would count as “done”.

Would love to find someone with the skill to implement this, but also open to work-around ideas. Thanks!

2

This sounds pretty interesting and I could see myself using similar in my workflows.

I don’t think I have the skills to implement it but I’m curious if this is something you know is a feature in other pieces of software with check-boxes. If so do you have an example of what does it look like to use from the user’s point of view? Handling the markdown and code is all good but having some UI to support it in the rendered view would probably also be a good idea.

3

Obsidian supports any single character between square brackets, but I use a custom snippet to render different icons within the boxes in preview mode:

checkboxes

If Inkdrop could recognize different characters within the brackets, I could do the styling myself, but that’s as far as my skills go.

4

It sounds like xit.

Remark (the Markdown parser) doesn’t recognize the custom checkboxes by default, so you have to extend it.

5

Hi @craftzdog! I’m starting to make this plugin. I’m not so familiar with Remark, so I need your help because I have some questions.
If I understand correctly, first I need to make like a plugin for remark to recognize other checkboxes as real checkboxes, like a regex to capture everything that is like - [ ], let’s say - [-], - [<], etc.
Then I need to push that plugin into remark and to create my own <input type="checkbox" /> component which I will be adding different styles to render on the preview.
Sounds right to you? Could you point me to other plugins or resources that did something similar not to start from scratch?

Thanks!

6

Hi @Juan_Banchero

Great to know you are trying to support them.
Yes, you are right.
Currently, Inkdrop uses the older version of Remark and I’m planning to upgrade it to the latest (Micromark) in the future (maybe this year).
It will involve many breaking changes, so I want you to wait until then.
Remark (Micromark) is an AST-based processor.
There are so many plugins available so you can check them out to learn how to build it:

e.g., micromark-extension-gfm:

7

Nice! Thanks for the information, I will put this project on hold till the migration to micromark is completed :smile:

1 Like
8

Hey @Juan_Banchero ,

v5.6.0-beta.0 has been released:

Now, it has the latest micromark, so you can start creating the plugin!

Here is the doc about the new Markdown renderer: