[emacs-wiki-discuss] Re: More planner stuff.

[Sacha Chua]

cc-ing our mailing list at address@hidden
(http://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/emacs-wiki-discuss). =)

Joseph Kiniry <address@hidden> writes:

Sorry about the late reply!

> I have installed your new dev snapshot.  I now witness different 
> behavior, but many things still seem to not be working right.  I was 
> afraid that perhaps some of my old customize settings are causing 
> trouble, plus I know you have added lots of new stuff, so I am going 
> through all the customize menus trying to learn what is in there now.

Whoops, so sorry...

> 1. Planner Calendar Show Planner Files: Hide Value Toggle  on (non-nil)
>    State: this option is unchanged from its standard setting.
> If non-nil, shows a plan file every time a day is selected in Calendar.
> How does one "select" a day in the calendar in such a way that planner 
> sees it?  I use calendar mode a lot, coupled with diary mode for years, 
> but I don't see any planner-related functionality in it.

First, call M-x planner-calendar-insinuate.

Then, whenever you're navigating in a calendar window (M-x calendar,
for example) using arrow keys, the planner file for the day underneath
your cursor will be displayed, if one exists. This behavior is
customizable.

> What is the point of the <contents> prefix?  How should the .diary 

It used to display a nice table of contents including note titles, but
we had to process <tags> before everything else (even notes) in order
to make sure <example>...</example> sections didn't get marked up any
further. Now it just provides a quick way to jump to the different
sections in published HTML. If you don't publish your plan, you can
remove it.

> schedule section be treated?  I have an existing multi-year diary.  
> Should I continue to use diary to set schedules, deadlines, etc. and 
> somehow they'll be integrated into and presented with planner?

If you use planner-diary, appointments from diary can be automatically
included in your planner files. Changes you make in your planner files
don't automatically reflect in your diary, though. I use a couple of
functions to make it easier for me to add things to my diary from my
planner file. For example, running sacha/planner-diary-schedule-task
while the cursor is on a task prompts me for the start and end time,
copies it into my schedule, and updates the task description.

> On a related note, I've been moving to iCal lately.  Has anyone talked 
> about integrating planner et al with iCal and related tools, perhaps 
> via WebDAV publishing?

Mmm, that should be interesting.

On a related note, you can actually export from planner to formats
understood by remind and diary. As long as your schedule entries are
relatively well-formed, you can parse it to produce whatever output
you want. For example, I usually make my schedule entries look like this:

hh:mm | hh:mm | Entry
hh:mm | hh:mm | Entry
hh:mm | hh:mm | Entry

This is published as a table in the final HTML page. The start and end
times make it easy for me to translate this into the format expected
by other programs.

> 3. Planner Sort Tasks Automatically: Hide Value Toggle  on (non-nil)
>    State: this option is unchanged from its standard setting.
> Non-nil means sort tasks whenever a planner file is saved.
> My day pages do not sort automatically, though I see the 
> write-files-functions does include the appropriate planner-sort-tasks 
> and planner-id-update-tasks-maybe.  This functionality seems to come 
> and go for me, BTW, as I update through various version of planner from 
> you.

Hmm. Day pages should sort by status and then priority. Does M-x
planner-fix-tasks fix it?

> 4. What is the difference between the planner diary file, the planner 
> diary cal desk file, the planner diary appts file, and the planer diary 
> private & public files and related functionality?  Can I use the same 
> file for both of these?  Can it simply be my old, big diary file?

Umm... Thomas Gehrlein, help! <grin>

I think this functionality evolved because people wanted to keep
public appointments for their colleagues and private appointments for
their own. The separation allowed them to publish different parts. I
suspect we can make this more flexible, though. As for cal-desk, it
seems to be a fancy way of displaying things...

> Parse error:  parse error in /Users/kiniry/Sites/WebWiki/2004.09.03.php 
> on line 1
> I've appended that page to this email so that you can review it.  There 
> happens to also be a 2004.09.03.html file, which I'll also attach.  But 
> I see no other HTML files in the publish directory.

<?xml version="1.0"?>

confuses PHP, as <? is the PHP shortcut tag. You could configure PHP to
use long tags, I think, or remove the XHTML tag.

> 6. Any plans on writing a Texinfo manual for all these neat new
> features? I enjoy writing docs and specs more than I enjoy writing
> software, so I might be of some assistance.

Perfect! I love getting documentation for current and proposed
features. It makes it so much easier to program.

Currently I like focusing on documenting how people use Planner. More
of "why", actually... <laugh>

Ooh. I think we've forgotten to document some of the features. What do
you particularly like, and how can the documentation be improved?

> Thanks for your assistance.  While I could just read the source and 
> figure some of these things out, sometimes the source says more about 
> current state-of-affairs rather than intentions-in-design. :)

^_^

-- 
Sacha Chua <address@hidden> - open source geekette
interests: emacs, gnu/linux, making computer science education fun
wearable computing, personal information management
http://sacha.free.net.ph/ - PGP Key ID: 0xE7FDF77C