Hi Ján,
arguing using a month view screenshot is a bit shaky, because even if in this view you see the "future" todo, lot of people use week or day views, where they cannot see anything in advance (e.g. if a todo due date is the begin of the week). The screenshot you attached is (from my point of view) abuse of the calendar for todo (yes, maybe you like it, but its another story).
I'm not saying that's how everybody should use their calendar, but I AM saying that in my experience a lot pf people do. For me, the weekly or daily views are a perversion - I have zero use for them _exactly_ because I rely on seeing my events - ALL my events - coming up some time in advance, with the month view, while I have no use for a view that displays either one single item for that day or nothing at all (on most days). That said, those todos are still visible in both the week and day view for those who use them - they're just no "advance warning", which is moot since those not using them would apparently prefer to not see them at all. And that's fine, I don't want to force them on anybody but _I_ definitely want to have them in my monthly view. Many, many other calender/todo providers seem to understand that distinction just fine.Also if the todo is displayed on due date in the calendar, what the hell is the difference between an event and a todo (except the icon)? You can simply create an event (instead of todo) and instead of completing it, you can simply delete it. From visual point of view there is no difference ...
There may not be for you, but there's a world of difference for me. Todos/tasks were invented for a reason - they can be "completed" at any time. Perhaps I get that thing done two weeks in advance, perhaps I drag it out for two weeks past due date, or I do it the exact last day - either way, I need to see them exactly as long as they're shortly upcoming AND uncompleted, and not at all the second I complete them (which does not mean I don't want to keep them recorded after). That's entirely different from events, which are pointless past their end time and impossible to complete in advance. But all of that is irrelevant really - once one buys into the game and acknowledges that in this playing field events and todos are different things that exist and that people use, it's no longer an option to just discard workflows different than one's own as invalid. That's what these things are, that's how they work, and that's what (at least some non-trivial percentage of) people expect them to do - those are given notions beyond any individual's latitude to interpret them.In short: there is simply no reason to not show the todo day (two, three, ... days) before the deadline. Deadline is not "do it this date" ... deadline says: do it in worst case this date.
...or, in case of recurring payments (which a lot of my todos are), there's simply not much reason to do them much too early either - you're cheating yourself out of some time you already paid for; you want to make that payment as close to the due date you can, but not go over it.As you can see in e-mails from Erik & Marten there are at least 4 approaches how other software show todos in calendar, so there is no "standard" for this functionality (everybody likes something different). And as I previously mentioned, I don't like any of these approaches => we have no plan to use any of them.
...unless most of them allow for this sort of thing optionally, which they seem to do, if you simply check the right checkbox - an obvious choice if there ever was one, since some people stand to gain while nobody loses anything. This doesn't mean that I ignore you (or anybody else), its about implementing only things I am sure that are "right". If we find an elegant and correct solution we will implement it.
Good to hear. If not, I guess I'll just have to find something that has less qualms about allowing me to do things my way - the same way I've used to be able to do them before - or I'll just have to hack that in myself if I can - yeah, what else is new. - Attila