Jackson

Jackson is a full-time task manager chatbot, part-time Kopitiam uncle.

Unlike a traditional task manager, Jackson leverages the speed and standardization of the Command-Line Interface (CLI) style of input, with all functionality embedded into commands and tags. If you can type fast, Jackson can get it done faster.

• Quick Start
• Features and Commands
  • Help with commands: help
  • Viewing the task list: list
  • Adding Todo tasks: todo
  • Adding Deadline tasks: deadline
  • Adding Event tasks: event
  • Marking tasks as completed: mark
  • Marking tasks as incomplete: unmark
  • Deleting tasks: delete
  • Sorting tasks: sort
  • Finding tasks: find
  • Exiting: bye
  • Saving and Loading
  • Task Names
  • Colour Coding
• FAQ
• Command Summary

Quick Start

1. Ensure that you have Java 17 installed on your computer.
2. Download the latest jar file from here.
3. Copy the jar file to the folder you'd want to run Jackson on.
4. Run java -jar jackson_v1.jar on the command prompt in the same directory.
5. You should see the GUI as shown below:

• To input, type in the text box and either hit Enter or click on the send button.

Tip

Try a few commands! You can view the list of supported commands with help

Features and Commands

Note

Notes about the syntax format:

• [NAME OF ARGUMENT] denotes a mandatory argument for a command.
• NAME OF ARGUMENT denotes a mandatory argument for a format.
• (NAME OF ARGUMENT) denotes an optional argument for either a command or format.
• Order of arguments cannot be changed; strict ordering has to be followed.
• Extra arguments will be interpreted as incorrect formatting

Help with commands: help

This command serves two purposes. Firstly, it displays the list of supported commands:

Format: help

Alternatively, suffixing help with a command displays more details about the command:

Format: help [COMMAND]

Viewing the task list: list

View the task list in its entirety. The display can be interpreted as follows:

• Event type (T is a Todo, E is an Event and D is a deadline)
• Status ([X] for completed, [ ] otherwise)
• Name
• Start and end dates (if applicable) in (HH:MM) DD MMM YYYY format

For example:

Format: list

Adding todo tasks: todo

Adds a todo task to the task list.

• Does not have a start or end date.
• The updated size of the task list will be shown.

Format: todo [NAME]

Adding deadline tasks: deadline

Adds a deadline task to the task list.

• Only has an end date (known as BY-DATE).
• BY-DATE must be specified in DD-MM-YYYY (HH:MM) format.
• The updated size of the task list will be shown.

Format: deadline [NAME] /by [BY-DATE]

Adding event tasks: event

Adds an event task to the task list.

• Has both start and end date (known as FROM-DATE and TO-DATE).
• Both FROM-DATE and TO-DATE must be specified in DD-MM-YYYY (HH:MM) format.
• FROM-DATE cannot be after TO-DATE.
• The updated size of the task list will be shown.

Format: event [NAME] /from [FROM-DATE] /to [TO-DATE]

Marking tasks as completed: mark

Marks a task at index i as completed.

• Updated task description and status will be shown.
• i is 1-indexed (ie. i starts counting from 1).

Format: mark [INDEX]

Marking tasks as incomplete: unmark

Marks a task at index i as incomplete.

• Updated task description and status will be shown.
• i is 1-indexed (ie. i starts counting from 1).

Format: unmark [INDEX]

Deleting tasks: delete

Deletes task at index i.

• Deleted task description will be shown.
• The updated size of the task list will be shown.
• i is 1-indexed (ie. i starts counting from 1).

Sorting tasks: sort

Sorts tasks in ascending or descending order based on task attributes.

• Task attributes are:
  • name (in lexicographical order)
  • startdatetime: for tasks without a start date (FROM-DATE), default value is null.
  • enddatetime: for tasks without an end date (TO-DATE or BY-DATE), default value is null.
  • status: whether the task is completed or not. In ascending order, completion is "larger".
  • tasktype: lexicographical order of whether task is a Todo (T), Event (E) or deadline (D).
• Orders of sorting are:
  • ascending: /a, which is the default if no order is given
  • descending: /d
• Null values are always considered "largest", in ascending order they are ranked last.

For example: sort name /d, before and after.

Format: sort [ATTRIBUTE] (ORDER)

Finding tasks: find

Finds task names containing the provided keyword.

• Naive search, as long as the task name contains the keyword at all it will be shown.

Format: find [KEYWORD]

Exiting: bye

Exits the program.

• Jackson will close the GUI window in 5 seconds after bye is called
• Text box and send button are disabled during these 5 seconds

Format: bye

Saving and Loading

Jackson uses active saving in a save file in data/data.txt.

The task list is always saved after any modification to itself, so there is no need to use a save command. If the save file does not exist, the program will create a new save file in the path specified in Jackson.java.

During initialisation, Jackson will read from the save file and load all previously loaded tasks into the current task list.

Caution

In case of file instability and permissions, it might be safer to store an extra copy of data.txt when transfering the save file across devices.

Task Names

Jackson enforces a strict no-conflict naming system. If the user wishes to create tasks of the same name (regardless of task type), the user should either rename the task they wish to add or delete the pre-existing task in the list.

Tip

Task names are monitored by name only, so any small modification to the name will be accepted as only one-to-one String comparison is used

Colour Coding

Generally, the GUI employs textbox background colour coding as such:

Type of Message	Colour of textbox background
User input	Light blue #87CEFA
Errors	Red #F19595
List operations	Orange #f1cfa2
Task operations	Green 90EE90
Startup and Shutdown	Blue-Green gradient #96e4d9 and #c2f3c2
Other Jackson responses	Purple CBC3E3

FAQ

Q: How do I transfer my data to another computer?
A: Simply copy main/resources/texts/data.txt into your new computer and install Jackson using the steps in Quick Start.

Command Summary

Click on each command to view the relevant section.

Command	Usage	remarks
help	help or help [COMMAND]	-
list	list	-
todo	todo [NAME]	-
deadline	deadline [NAME] /by [BY-DATE]	[BY-DATE] in DD-MM-YYYY (HH:MM) format
event	event [NAME] /from [FROM-DATE] /to [TO-DATE]	[FROM-DATE] and [TO-DATE] in DD-MM-YYYY (HH:MM) format
mark	mark [INDEX]	1-indexed [INDEX]
unmark	unmark [INDEX]	1-indexed [INDEX]
delete	delete [INDEX]	1-indexed [INDEX]
sort	sort [ATTRIBUTE] (ORDER)	-
find	find [KEYWORD]	-
bye	bye	-
???	???	???