Re: [O] proposal to have ignoreheading tags/properties

[Mark Edgington]

Thorsten Jolitz <tjolitz <at> gmail.com> writes:

> 
> In a tree structure, when ignoring the parent node, it seems only
> logical that the siblings are ignored too. 
> 
> You seem to use the wrong tool for the task (headlines), this looks like
> a perfect use case for TAGS, i.e. define your (concept) groups as
> tags. If these tags are not part of `org-export-exclude-tags' they won't
> affect exporting, but you can still use them to build your agenda or a
> sparse tree or so.
> 

Why do you suppose this is the "wrong tool"?  It is a quite natural and
sensible tool, because it allows grouping, folding, and nesting collections
of items together.  I cannot do that with tags.  If you don't like the idea
of having a headline serve this purpose, then perhaps we can invent a new
kind of "pseudo-headline" which behaves in this way.  How would you propose
to use tags alone to do something like the following which allows folding
and unfolding the contents, without a lot of extra work? -- for example:

* Chapters about Topic A  :pseudo:
** Chapter 1 Title
** Chapter 2 Title
* Chapters about Topic B  :pseudo:
** Chapter 3 Title
List of interesting things:
*** items relevant to X   :pseudo:
- item 1
- item 2
- item 3
*** items relevant to Y   :pseudo:
- item 4
- item 5


Another example would be, say, if you wanted to divide up some kind of
text-file (e.g. source code, or prose), dividing it into groupings that make
sense to you, but not wanting to actually bring these changes into the
document's exported structure.  Here's an example of a letter:

* Addresses / date   :pseudo:
123 Cherry Lane
City, ST 12345

October 5, 2014

Ms. Jane Doe
Accounts Payable
....

* Greeting           :pseudo:
Dear Ms. Johnson:

* Body               :pseudo:
It has come to my attention that ......

* Closing            :pseudo:
Sincerely,


John Doe

* Postscript         :pseudo:
P.S. .....


Perhaps one could make it so that when a headline bullet (sequence) has a
'#' character tacked on after the sequence, it is no longer a headline, but
a "summary node" having the property that it promotes the levels of all its
children.  It doesn't much matter to me *how* one makes such a node, but I
think the availability of nodes/headlines like this is important.

In any case, it's not clear that this is "the wrong tool".  I would use it,
and for me (and presumably others) it would be the right (kind of) tool. 
Furthermore tags are limited by their brevity -- with a pseudo headline I
can describe a concept or category with much more detail / clarity.