Chapters

The app already holds two things with dates on them. A stream is an effort that progresses and eventually finishes. A meeting on Day is an appointment at a time. A chapter is neither. It is a run of days with a name, so there is no progress on it and nothing to finish — it starts, it runs, and at some point it is over.

Because a chapter is its span, its row leads with its dates rather than its name. Two months of choppy travel is the same shape whether you call it a trip or a stretch, and the dates are what tell you which one you are reading.

A chapter can start on a date, end on a date, or run open-ended from its start. An end can also be marked as soft, which means a horizon rather than a finish line — the point where the thing is expected to wind down rather than the day it stops. A soft end shows with a tilde before it, and a chapter that runs past a soft end is still running. Only a hard end completes one.

That distinction exists because most real stretches have one. Leaving in late September for about two months is not a commitment to a particular Thursday, and a date printed flat would claim a precision you never gave.

You mark a chapter as Committed, Maybe or Canceled. Everything else about its state is read off the calendar: a committed chapter reads as committed before its start date, active once it has begun, and completed after a hard end has passed. A chapter you marked Maybe stays Maybe until you commit to it, and a canceled one stays canceled whatever its dates say.

A chapter therefore cannot claim to be running on a week it had not started. The status is worked out each time it is read, so time passing keeps it right on its own.

A chapter is a run of days, so the days inside it belong to it, and so does everything you wrote on those days. That is the whole relationship. A chapter never needs tidying and can never hold a stale list, and moving its dates moves what it covers.

A chapter can sit inside another one. A single trip inside a longer travel stretch is one chapter within another, and both are true at once.

Chapters is on the menu between Streams and Notes, in a browser and in the installed phone app alike, and both read the same list the same way. The list is grouped, and each group takes the name of the word its chapters stand under. Active and Completed are the two the dates work out. Committed, Maybe and Canceled are the three you set. What is running comes first, then what is coming, then what is over. Every heading folds, and Completed and Canceled open folded with a count beside them, since a chapter that is over is something to look up rather than something to read past. What you fold is remembered on the device you folded it on, so the phone and the browser each keep their own answer.

Inside a group the earliest span leads, and a chapter you have not dated yet leads all of them. A chapter that sits inside another is drawn within its parent's row rather than beside it. Under the name is whatever you wrote about the chapter, and its life area beside the dates.

A field reading Name a chapter makes one: type a name and add it. It exists from that moment with no dates on it, which is an intention rather than a span.

Tapping a chapter opens it, on the web and on the phone alike. Its name, its stance, its start, its end, the life area it belongs to, the chapter it sits inside and a note are all set there, and Save writes them. The end offers On that day or Around then, which is how a soft end is written. Status on the same panel reads back what the app worked out and takes no edit. Delete permanently is there too, and it asks first. The days inside keep what you wrote on them.