Hint ':add' for command start

[lauft]

Analogous to

timew start FOO BAR BAZ
stop FOO

which only would stop tracking for FOO but will keep tracking running for BAR and BAZ, add a hint :add such that

timew start FOO
timew start :add BAR

would stop tracking for FOO and then create a new interval with tags FOO BAR.

[lauft]

Spawned from #151

[maciejmotyka]

My primary use case for this would be to track the time spent sitting and standing while working. Is this feature on your roadmap? If not then I might try to code it.

[lauft]

@maciejmotyka Do you want to track additionally whether you sat or stood while working? Otherwise

$ timew start STANDING
...
$ timew start SITTING
...

should already do the job. Please give a small sketch of your usecase before proceeding to code it. What command calls to you envision, how should the application behave?

[maciejmotyka]

I use taskwarrior integration to track tasks, I'd like to independently trigger non-task tracking like sitting/standing time or office/home location. Usually, my tasks have several tags, so having to look them up and retype would be a pain.

Example command calls for performing 2 tasks and independently tracking location and posture.

timew start OFFICE
timew start :add STANDING
taskwarrior start :add task1

taskwarrior done task1
taskwarrior start :add task2
timew stop STANDING
timew start :add SITTING

taskwarrior done task2
timew stop

For convenience I would use personal aliases alias sit='timew stop STANDING; timew start :add SITTING' alias stand='timew stop SITTING; timew start :add STANDING'

[lauft]

Currently this workflow will fail with the default on-modify hook. The hook will treat the :add from the third line as a tag and thus this will just start a new interval with tags :add task1.

Btw. there is PR #329 which would introduce the requirement that task and interval have the same tag set. This would also conflict with your workflow. 🤔

To answer your previous question: The :add hint for command start is currently not on the roadmap. You may give it a try, but I cannot promise when it will be included. Considering the above, there is a bit more to do to accomplish your desired workflow...

[maciejmotyka]

Thanks for all the info. I guess, for now, I'll figure out how to spawn a second independent instance of timewarrior that's not hooked to taskwarrior and track these additional tags there.

[xeruf]

Yes, I would also suggest using a second db, maybe something like this:

timew() {
	positiondb=/tmp/timew/positiondb
	case "$1" in
	stand)	TIMEWARRIORDB=$positiondb command timew start STANDING "${@:2}";;
	sit)  	TIMEWARRIORDB=$positiondb command timew start SITTING "${@:2}";;
	stop) 	TIMEWARRIORDB=$positiondb command timew stop
			command timew "$@";;
	*) command timew "$@";;
	esac
}

[t-nil]

What about a different syntactic approach? Make continue work on still running intervals, and introduce +/- syntax for tags, e.g.

timew start foo bar
# Tracking bar foo
timew continue +baz -bar
# Stopping bar foo
# Tracking baz foo

I would like that quite alot

[lauft]

timew cont +baz -bar would collide with the feature continue by tag of the continue command. But adding support for +<tag>/-<tag> to the start command might be an option to consider.

$ timew start foo
# tracking 'foo'
$ timew start bar
# tracking 'bar' (without prefix, usual switching behavior)
$ timew start +foo
# tracking 'foo' 'bar' (equivalent to `$ timew start foo bar`)
$ timew start -bar +baz
# tracking 'foo' 'baz' (equivalent to `$ timew stop bar ; timew start foo baz`)

This would enhance the present behavior of start, however require to disallow + and - as the first character for tags.

[smemsh]

I am using + for some of my tags, for me it represents tags from the corresponding taskwarrior task. There is some related discussion already at issue 451