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[O] Some struggles of mine with org-mode
From: |
lngndvs |
Subject: |
[O] Some struggles of mine with org-mode |
Date: |
Tue, 07 Feb 2012 14:16:02 -0800 |
[This post concerns what have become, for me, conflicts between the
scopes of org-agenda-files and the universe I would like to search
within all org files, in particular. I hope I will be forgiven for
drifting substantially from that focused topic]
Org-mode is well entrenched into my daily work flow, in many
ways.
- Miscellaneous notes
- Capturing ideas and articles
- On-the-fly structured captures of several kinds
- Todo lists
- Remembering deadlines and activities
- Collecting project information from diverse sources
- Exporting any of the above, just about anything at all, as
clean PDF files.
- The occasional Beamer presentation
For all that org-mode has become my go-to tool of choice, there are
a number of things I still struggle with. I want to post this
message as, I suppose, too much of a blanket request. Here are
some of the things I don't get:
- Firefox or other browser integration
- Email. Some very elegant (in complicated ways) solutions have
been generated, but all I need it simple text-based email. I
would be willing to install sendmail or postfix, if need be,
but I don't really wish to send html based email. See the next
item.
- Addresses/Contacts. I like Gnus, and I like BBDB, but I've
never been completely comfortable with them. I used to keep
contacts in EDB, a database I designed myself, and it worked
really, really well. I've posted about his subject before, and
I can see it didn't strike a chord on this list. I tried
org-contacts, but it seems idiosyncratic, and limited.
- Setting up birthday alerts, for example. I feel intimidated
every time I am about to try to put a new birthday in a
list. Ideally, I would do this with a capture template. The
best so far is to keep birthdays in a list in .emacs.el
- Searching. One thing I really like about Org-mode is the
ability to keep a large number of kinds of information straight
in various ways---either in separate files, or for related
topics, in different headlines of the same file. I need all
of these files to be searched. The best searching seems to
reside in the agenda interface. But it seems illogical, to
me, to constrain searching to the same set of files as for an
Agenda, except if I am only searching things I am currently
keeping on todo lists. I want a large subset of *.org files
open for searches, but I may want to limit the number of files
processed for a daily or weekly agenda view. Am I missing
something?
A utility on the mailing list, org-occur-goto, searches any
open files, an improvement. But the very fact I am searching
for something suggests this will require a greater search
universe. Ideally, that universe will include several
large subtrees, even though within them, only a small number of
files may be involved. For example, one would like to have a
directory, at some random location in the home "~/" tree, for
recipes. I want them to be kept together in an integral
tree. But I want some of the files to be kept under org-mode
control. Do I want these files in my agenda files?
I do not wish to have all of my action dumped together in ~/org
or some such. Examples subdirectories might include:
- ~/HEALTH-ISSUES/
- ~/ARTICLES/tuning-the-guitar/
- ~/PROJECTS/recipes/
I have a large ~/WorkBench directory that includes all ongoing
work. I may not know on any given day which existing projects I
will be working on. I like to scatter my TODOs among the
project files, but I need to maintain instantaneous access to
them, especially through the agenda views.
So, to summarize, org-agenda-files should reflect those files I
need to access because they have TODOs, Deadlines, Happenings, or
Reminders in them. My search Universe should be constrained
enough to result in instant searches, but not so constrained as
org-agenda-files that need to be processed to produce a daily
agenda.
- [O] Some struggles of mine with org-mode,
lngndvs <=