Obsidian's .base file VS TaskBoard's .taskboard file

[tu2-atmanand]

This discussion is associated with the following ticket : #591 .

In this discussion, I want to provide a brief of what this new feature/change will going to be in this plugin, why its important and also how its similar to the Obsidian bases.

From the above mentioned ticket, you might have got the idea of what this change is going to be. Basically, after the introduction of bases in Obsidian, users have adopted this new workflow very easily and majority of the users are now very well versed with its usage and its importance. Bases is all about creating filtered views for your notes, which basically displays the notes in the vault using different views (table, list, map, etc). The Obsidian base in itself, doesnt store any user data, like any content. But rather it stores the configuration of the view user has created. The main idea of a .base file is that, its a simple file, which stores the view configurations, user has created in a YAML like format. So, its a simple txt like file, with only the configuration information. And when user opens the file inside Obsidian, it gets rendered as a Obsidian tab, which is basically a custom UI, in which user can change the type of the view.

A task board file (.taskboard) will be nothing different. This file will be created by Task Board plugin for the exact same purpose. It will only store just the configuration about the board user has created in Task Board, to manage their small to large projects and when user will try to open the file through the file navigation panel, it will open a new tab, which will render the board, just like how this plugin is rendering a board right now.

Why this change is required

Obsidian is a software, where user is producing their own data, may it be creative, management, research, resource collection, etc.
When users are using plugins, to do the same, whatever data produced through the plugin is also user's data. Hence, its very important that this data should be preserved and it should stored inside the vault, rather than storing it inside the plugin cache folder or localStorage, etc. Which can lead to data loss when there is a plugin failure or even the Obsidian crashes. But the data stored inside within a file, is always safe and preserved for future use and user has the complete control over their data.

Hence, the decision is made that :

• The configuration data for the complete board.
• The configuration data for a Kanban view.
• The configurations as well as layout data of the map view.
  Will be stored inside a single file (.taskboard) with the vault.

Although this is not very critical data, but still user do not want to loose it, as they have spent some time configuring it as per their needs and it should be preserved at any cost.

Why not just make use of .base

Now, many users will going to have this question of, "why not simply make use of the base view feature to render a Task Board?"

Well, technically speaking this can be done, but its going to be a huge overhead, which will require to modify a lot of code. But the main reasons are as follows :

• No support for inline-tasks : The BIGGEST reason, why Task Board cannot make use of a base, is because, when we create a base file and apply various filters to have a custom view, it only fetches files and not the inline-tasks present within the content of those files. And, this plugin was originally developed to manage inline-tasks. So, it will be not possible to use a base to view inline-tasks. (Although, I am experimenting with this by passing the data to be displayed inside the base from task board's cache. So technically it will be possible, but I am not sure, how optimized it will be).
• Cannot store huge data : I believe a lot of users likes to edit their base file content directly, either through the code block or using an external file editor. And, Task Board wants to store a lot of other data like the map view data, which are basically the positions and sizes of the nodes (task cards). If user is having a lot of cards on their map view, this will going to be a huge data in the file. Imagine it like a .excalidraw file. So, Task Board's .taskboard file will be storing configuration data as well as this map view data, and what not. And, I dont think it will be a good idea to store such data inside inside the .base file, which might risk the data integrity as well as it will restrict task board from growing independently.
• Development restrictions : The base feature in Obsidian is also very new and limited for now. Over time, I believe Obsidian team will going to expose more APIs to help plugin developers, extend the functionality of a base. But right now, its very limited and there are not much optimized ways to implement the feature which are present right now in Task Board. So, during development, I will going to feel very restricted in implementing various features the way I imagine them and I will be forced to change my feature ideas so that it works according to the base file architecture. I wont feel independent enough while working on the Task Board features. Hence, right now Task Board cannot use a base file to render a board inside it with all its current features.

Benefits of this new decision

With this new change, Task Board users will now going to have the following functionalities and extra power :

• Easy to duplicate boards : The tasks on different devices may vary. But the board configuration will going to remain the same. So, for example, if user want to recreate a similar task board, from one vault to another. They can easily do so, by simply copy pasting the .taskboard file, then rename it, then fine-tune the existing configurations.
• Easy to sync across devices : Even when synching across different devices, the board configurations will be synced, since this .taskboard files will be sitting within your vault folders. But, the data inside them may vary, based on which tasks are present on your different devices.
• Open multiple boards simultaneously : Since, each of these .taskboard files will going to open its own board. Users will now able to open multiple boards inside Obsidian tab. Which is very useful, if you have big monitors or multi-monitor setup.
• Similar to bases experience : As Obsidian users are already familiar with using and managing .base files, these new task board files will feel no different. And user can able to place them in their different folders and arrange them however they want.
• Embed the board in notes (hopefully) : Just like a base file, hopefully, users will able to embed a .taskboard file inside a note.
• Optimized data handling : This approach of managing configuration data will also drastically improve the mechanism Task Board is using to manage the data. Now, it will be less data read/write operation from disk single file at a time.

[tu2-atmanand]

Ill highly recommend to also refer the following ticket : #561

[AE-SAY-WAY]

I guess the end goal, once more api is released, is a .taskboard.base?

[tu2-atmanand]

Yeah, this is also a nice idea to separate other base files from Task Board view in bases. But, again this should be supported by Obsidian team natively for Task Board to use it.

[tu2-atmanand]

Looks like a .taskboard file is going to look more similar to a .base file now. Because, now, instead of having a single board and switching the views for the the same board, users can now create multiple views inside the same .taskboard file. This is like creating multiple instances of the board in the same file, will call these board instances as "Views" and the whole board file (.taskboard) will be simply called as a "Board". These views will be completely independent of each other, so its upto the user, whether they want to keep all the views related using the same "view filters" (earlier knows as "board filters") or not.

Here is the ticket to understand why this change will be made : #723

This change is very much required because it will really help users to have as many views as they want for their same project. And remember, in Task Board philosophy, for each project you should create a new board (.taskboard file).

[MrDaisyBates]

Hello, @tu2-atmanand ! I hope you're well!

I was curious to hear how progress is going on the .taskboard file endeavor? I'm quite excited about it. It really seems like a lot of really juicy functionality is going to be locked right behind it. I think some really exciting times are ahead for all of us! Hahaha.

Take care and thanks for all you do!

[tu2-atmanand]

Hi @MrDaisyBates !

Thanks for saying that! Comments like this adds motivation to be on track. Really happy to hear that there is a interest in this new idea!

The progress is on track... This week is completely dedicated to the docs. Will try to finish it by this week.

Coming to this topic, both the features (#591 and #723) has been implemented. But the most of the time I will need to spend in next couple of weeks is to create the migration code and testing docs. As you know from this comment, the only way to test the new version 2.0.0 of Task Board is through the beta version release. Hence, for this new version, testing will be slightly different. In a test vault, users will need to install the version, 1.10.0, then use the map view feature and other features, if possible, a little bit. Now upgrade to the beta version of 2.0.0 and hopefully, if my migration code is correct, then all the data should transfer from the localStorage to users vault into the respective .taskboard files for the respective boards. No need to worry on this part, all migration and testing guides will be provided.

This time, I will need to be professional with the docs, as a proper migration guide will help user to seamlessly migrate from version 1 to version 2 of Task Board. So, the development time was actually very short, I did it in last few weeks itself, the major part of next 2 months will be spent on the migration part and testing only.

Will going to release the first beta version, v2.0.0-beta-1, once the migration code is ready. Might need few weeks for this. Then it will be the testing phase and finally, it everything goes right, within next 2 moths, will be releasing the main version, Task Board v2.0.0.

[MrDaisyBates]

I appreciate all your hard work and consistency, @tu2-atmanand ! Congrats on getting a beta for 2.0 out. Big deal here! Really excited for all that is to come! <3

[tu2-atmanand]

Task Board 2.x.x series testing

This change has been finally implemented and I have also done some testing to verify the working of this new architecture. But, to thoroughly test everything about the new version, will be doing extensive testing for about a month.

Testing has been started and the first beta version has been released with all the important guides which explains everything on how to do the testing and how the migrations will work. Please see the release notes : Task Board 2.0.0-beta-1 Release Notes.

Moving for review.