Hawk Wings reader Jon Yates emails to ask, “Any idea how to print a list of all your to do headings in OSX Leopard mail.app?”

Good question! I don’t think you can. At least, I can’t work it out (which may not be the same thing).

Luckily because of the new system-wide task database in Leopard, your choices are not restricted to Mail.

You can, of course, do it in iCal. But it takes a lot of stuffing around with the options in the Print dialog to whittle things down to a lean, tasks-only list. And then more clicking to get it to print out as, for example, a PDF.

But in the end you can get there:

You could do it in a GTD app like OmniFocus or Things, but that seems like a hammer and walnut solution for the problem. Jon just want to email a list of tasks.

Fortunately, a quicker, more efficient and free solution is not far away. The task management widget DoBeDo (which also does a lot of other things — see earlier Hawk Wings post) has a print option that can quick spit out a list of tasks in Preview as a PDF or to a specified printer.

After you set the option on the back of the widget, it is a one step operation (mouse-click or ⌘P), and produces a nice list:

It also has a one-click option (⌘E) to send the list to an email address that you specify.

DoBeDo has recently been updated, and now features a “Last Day of the Month” scheduling option and treats “procrastinated” tasks without a due date as due today.

It also has more skins that the last time I looked (selection below):

The Apple Calendar skin looks nice next to the other black widgets in Dashboard:

DoBeDo is freeware. It is available along with detailed documentation of its options and keyboard shortcuts from the developer’s web site . mail.app, apple mail, tasks, todos, ical, printing, lists, dobedo, widget, pdf, productivity, tips, leopard

DoBeDo is a nifty Dashboard widget that displays iCal to-dos, and allows them to be added, marked as done or edited (see an earlier Hawk Wings post for more details and screenshots).

The developer has just released an updated version with a large number of new and improved features.

It now supports iCal groups and provides basic URL support. Keyboard shortcuts are more consistent and the to-do sorting options are better behaved.

Tasks can now be moved across calendars and takes with future due dates can be hidden.

It adds another skin (or theme) to the existing options, a wide format that matches the Calendar widget (pictured, slightly reduced).

Printing improvements include a print button on the front of the widget and print-outs titled with the list’s name. Users can choose a default printer or send the list to a PDF in Preview.

The developer has also included various speed and memory optimisations.

It’s a nice piece of work and it’s freeware as well. You can get it from the developer’s web site .ical, widget, dashboard, productivity, todos, not apple mail

You don’t have to wait until next year to get your hands on the new features in Mail 3.0. The third-party apps and plugins that may have inspired the new features are available now.

However odd and unsettling this year’s WWDC keynote was (Leander Kahney has some interesting thoughts ), it was good news for Mail.app fans.

Apple has spent some time and energy working on Mail. With the exception of templates, the other new features previewed by Steve Jobs will make it a better productivity tool.

With notes, to-dos and the ability to manage RSS feeds (See Apple’s new Leopard Mail web page for more), Mail 3.0 really will “help you to do more with your Mail” as Apple suggests.

Oddly, Apple’s press release rather oversold these advances. “Leopard’s Mail includes breakthrough new features that have never been seen before in a Mail application,” it pronounces.

Not true. And not smart either. Why the Apple PR machine didn’t adopt a more honest approach (“Leopard’s Mail takes some great ideas and makes them even better”), I don’t know. It’s as if Thunderbird, MailTags, Event Maker, Note to Self, or the stationery in Outlook Express and other mail clients never existed.

In any case, the good news is that you can take advantage of these new features now (if not always in quite the polished form Leopard promises).

To-dos (not system-wide) — MailTags
Templates (not HTML) — Mail Templates, Roll your own
Notes (not RTF) — Note to Self
RSS feeds (in your Inbox) — FeedMailer, rmail

I can’t make up my mind about the new HTML templates. My inner plain-texter revolts, but I can see how some people will find them tremendous fun.mail.app, productivity, apple mail, leopard, todos, iCal, notes, templates, RSS feeds, apple

Georg Klein has updated his Mail2iCal AppleScript which creates an iCal event from a selected Mail.app message.

The new version (1.5) now also creates to-dos, incorporating the function of his Mail2iCalToDo script.

It also now comes with an installer and offers you the option at installation of nominating a default calendar for the events and to-dos.

When activated from the script menu, a new dialog lets you choose to make an event or a to-do from the message:

Behind the scenes, several bugs have been fixed and the script now saves its preferences in a standard plist file.

You can get Mail2iCal from Georg’s site , from MacUpdate or from VersionTracker .ical, events, to-dos, todos, mail.app, apple mail, applescript, mail2ical, productivity

Ryan Cuthbertson has written an AppleScript which offers an unusual solution to organising your “To Do” tasks in iCal.

Listing all your To Dos all the time is not always helpful. Scheduled To Dos could help you to be more productive as Ryan explains:

Don’t you wish you could make some iCal To Do items appear in iCal’s To Do list only after a certain date? For example, have you ever had an assignment due in four weeks’ time but which it was only possible or efficient to work on in the fortnight before? Currently iCal provides no real facility for this situation—you can’t enter a start date for a To Do.

Now you can. Using Ryan’s Event2ToDo AppleScript, you can create an event at the time you want the To Do to appear in your To Do list and fill in the details according to the instructions in its readme file.

The readme file also explains how to set the script to run 0 minutes before the event is due. Then you can forget about it and focus on the To Dos that need to get done right now.

Hey Presto, When the time is right, the script inserts your To Do into the list just when you need to focus on getting it done. Productive!

Event2ToDo is freeware and is available from Ryan’s web site .productivity, ical, applescript, events, todos, scheduling, getting things done, tips

My very favourite app for integrating Mail with iCal has been updated.

Event Maker allows you to create normal and all-day events and To Dos from a selected message in Mail.app or from scratch. The quick launch scripts mean that the whole process can be accomplished without touching the mouse once.

Event Maker 0.4 sports a redesigned interface to allow for alternate methods of setting dates, including a pop-up calendar, and an alarm drawer which supports full keyboard access.

The interface is cleaner:

It also now has full undo and redo functions and improved error-checking when creating events. The internal update feature has also been improved.

The app’s preferences offer good control over the creation process, allowing you to set default durations, to tell the app how to create events and what to do next:

Mike emails to say that he hasn’t put the new version up on MacUpdate or VersionTracker yet, but if you already have it installed, the auto-update feature will fetch it.

If you don’t yet use it, but want to try it out, download version 0.3 from MacUpdate and then internally update to the newest version.

Event Maker is donation-ware.mail.app, apple mail, ical, events, messages, todos, keyboard shortcuts, productivity

A slightly-tweaked new version of Event Maker has been released.

Event Maker is a clever little app that creates an iCal event or to-do from the currently selected Mail.app message. It also creates events and to-do from scratch.

The revised version fixes some odd things that could happen when editing event lengths, addresses some minor issues with date recognition for alarms and resolves issues with default event length entry in preferences.

It is donation-ware and is available from MacUpdate .events, ical, mail.app, apple mail, plugins, alarms, todos