I got a little bored today so I added task progress indicators to this Obsidian roadmap thing I built for work.

When a task is created, but is not yet scheduled, it appears as an outlined rectangle. It turns into a grey rectangle when it’s added to the sprint. It then changes colour as the task progresses through the software lifecycle; turning purple while it’s being developed, blue while it’s being tested, and finally green when it’s ready for release.

They’re implemented as embedded SVG images, added directly to the note much like the span element used for status labels.

It’s nice being able to add embellishments like this. Obsidian treating notes as regular files on the file-system is a huge advantage for these sorts of automations. No need to learn how to make a plugin; just write a shell script¹ that’ll output Markdown, schedule it to run a couple of times a day, and you’re good to go.

Back working on Micropub Checkin. Re-engineered the home page to now include a list of what would eventually be check-ins — both historical and soon to be published — complete with the check-in type emoji as the icon:

The same list of emoji icons now adorn the check-in type picker as well (except for the airplane one which seems to always be shown as what I can only describe as the “Wingding” representation):

I went around a bit trying to work out how best to use these emojis icons in the leading slot of the ListTile widget. I expored trying to convert them to IconData, but it turns out just using a Text widget with a large font worked well. I wrapped in in a Widget type with a fixed font-size and so far it looks quite good, at least in the emulator:

class EmojiIcon extends StatelessWidget {
  final String emoji;

  const EmojiIcon({super.key, required this.emoji});

  Widget build(BuildContext context) {
    return Text(emoji, style: TextStyle(fontSize: 26.0));
  }
}

Also started working on a Cubit to handle state for the main page. I had a bit of trouble working ont where the soon-to-be database call to get the list of checkins should go in the cubit. After asking ChatGPT, it looks like the initializer is the best place for it:

class CheckinListCubit extends Cubit<CheckinListState> {

  CheckinListCubit(): super(LoadingCheckinListState()) {
    loadCheckinList();
  }

  void loadCheckinList() async {
    var listOfCheckins = await read_database(); 
    emit(FoundCheckinListState(checkins));
  }
}

I’ve got some scaffolding code in place to simulate this, and so far it seems to work.

I need to start working on the database layer and having the ability to edit and delete check-ins before they’re published. I think I’ll tackle that next.

Does this loading window really need to be modal?

Hmm, either Daniel is super obsessed with the Beths (or at least posting about it), or there’s a bug somewhere. 😀

What would be a nice addition to the spell-check suggestions menu is a brief (3-5 words) definition of the word. I always find myself choosing the wrong suggestion, and a feature like this would help a lot.

Getting some pretty strange spam emails sent to my Gmail address (which I still use). It’s the same badly formatted multi-MIME message body with different From and Subject lines. They’re trying to get… something from me? Logins, maybe? Worst phishing attempt ever!

Follow-up from my earlier post about ChatGTP this morning, it turns out I probably should’ve RTFM:

Thanks to @andreab@social.lol for the tip.