Re: [Orgmode] Org-mode things

[Brian van den Broek]

Nuutti Kotivuori said unto the world upon 09/02/2007 08:26 AM:
> Hello,
>
> I'm a very new org-mode user and thought I'd introduce myself while
> asking about a few things. I've used org-mode only about a couple
> weeks and am slowly trying to learn all the kinks of it.

Hi Nuutti,

I'm pretty new too and by no means past learning the ins and outs 
myself. But, for what it's worth:

> But there's a few things I'm having difficulty setting up.
>
> The main confusion I have is about 'scheduled' and 'deadline' items
> versus items that just have an active date (and time).
>
> For me, the meanings are roughly:
>
> - Active date and time, but not todo: an event I need to know about
>   but probably do nothing about.
> - Active date and time, and todo: an appointment, something that I
>   need to act on.
> - Scheduled date: merely a timestamp that tells me that this item is
>   not relevant to me *before* the given time. But it also doesn't mean
>   that it would be an appointment or have a set time to do it on (just
>   after the scheduled time).
> - Deadline date: a hard deadline before which I need to get something
>   done - but doesn't specify when it needs to be done, just before the
>   deadline.

I use active dates and times for appointments, and have nested 
subitems representing any TODO's needing to get done to prepare for 
the appointment. Representing an appointment as a TODO doesn't make 
sense to me, as to keep the appointment all I need to do is show up, 
and if that block of time is marked in my agenda view, that's enough 
to remind me to go :-)

I do the same for events I want to know about but that are not 
appointments. To help distinguish them I tag all appointments with a 
:Meeting: tag.

For tasks, I use deadlines to indicate a must-be done by time. I use 
schedules to indicate a (generally optimistic) intention to get that 
task done. Usually, my scheduled times are 3-5 days ahead of the deadline.

> So, to actually use these in org-mode, I'd like to have the following
> kinds of lists:

I've pointed to a few relevant bits of the manual. I'm not sure that 
they will get all of what you want, but they'll get you started.

> - Agenda: I want an agenda with all the active date events, but
>   *without* scheduled items at all and with deadline items *only*
>   shown on the date the deadline is actually on. The agenda doesn't
>   need any early warning since for me it is simply the things that
>   must get done.

For scheduled TODO items, you can exclude them. See Org Mode Manual
"Configure the variable org-agenda-todo-ignore-scheduled to exclude 
scheduled items from the global TODO list."
http://staff.science.uva.nl/~dominik/Tools/org/org.html

The deadline advance warning is configurable:
"In addition, the compilation for today will carry a warning about the 
approaching or missed deadline, starting org-deadline-warning-days 
before the due date, and continuing until the entry is marked DONE."
http://staff.science.uva.nl/~dominik/Tools/org/org.html#Agenda-dispatcher

There has also been some recent discussion about employing a 
non-default deadline-warning-days for custom agenda commands.
<http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-orgmode/2007-08/msg00303.html>
and
<http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-orgmode/2007-09/msg00009.html>
(Unfortunately, the gnu.org archive seems to break threads that span 
two months, hence the two links.)

> - Agenda of todo entries: Same as above, but only for todo items -
>   shorter agenda when I only want to see what I must do.

"t / T
    Create a list of all TODO items (see Global TODO list). "
http://staff.science.uva.nl/~dominik/Tools/org/org.html#Agenda-dispatcher

> - Todo-list: The normal todo list, but with a few differences. I want
>   the todo list to show me everything relevant I need to do, so I want
>   to see scheduled entries on the todo list only *after* their
>   scheduled time has passed - when they are actually relevant. For
>   deadline entries, I want their color to reflect the normal warning
>   days behavior, so I can quickly spot deadlines that are approaching
>   on my todo list. And for normal todo items that have a scheduled
>   time, I wouldn't wish to see them on the todo list at all - they are
>   in the agenda and I don't have to care about them except on the
>   specific day or time they are on.

I'm not sure how you are thinking of scheduled items, but I doubt that 
your way mixes well with org-mode's.

> I'd be happy for any pointers to achieve these kinds of listings in
> org-mode.
>
> Then another general problem.
>
> The problem is that I have a really hierarchical tree, where the
> *headings above* are really important. If I have a todo item like:
>
>   ***** Call about invoice
>
> That doesn't help me much if I can't see the heading that it is
> under. This is ofcourse no problem with sparse trees as those can show
> the context nicely, but it is a problem in two things.
>
> The todo lists I have are a bit messy since I don't know what the todo
> item is about without peeking under which heading it is. Usually this
> isn't a big problem since either I guess or can just look it up fast
> enough - but sometimes it would be nice to have a possibility of
> putting the immediate next parent heading in a column or somehow on
> the line to show.

Follow mode in the agenda view is a big help with this. Likewise, I 
use Category lines to help with this a lot:

"The category is a broad label assigned to each agenda item. By 
default, the category is simply derived from the file name, but you 
can also specify it with a special line in the buffer, like this:

     #+CATEGORY: Thesis"
http://staff.science.uva.nl/~dominik/Tools/org/org.html#Agenda-dispatcher


> But the bigger problem I have about this is about archiving.

<snip>

> So, this solution works for me, but I'm wondering if others have had
> similar problems and how they've solved those.

As per recent posts of mine, I'm not yet sorted out on how to use 
archiving, either. :-)


> I have a few more problems to talk about, but this will do for
> starters - and I'm sure I will have quite a few more as I start to use
> org-mode more.
>
> Thanks in advance,
> -- Naked


I hope that there's some help in there somewhere :-)

Best,

Brian vdB