[O] Structuring and (cross)linking information in org-mode

[Daniel Hertrich]

Hi all,

I’m new to this mailing list and very eager to see what’s up in here. Is it 
still active? I hope so. Emacs is old, but it seems that still many people use 
it. 

So am I. After trying many different approaches to organizing information and 
tasks, I’m now looking into Emacs / org-mode, because I like the efficient 
keyboard-centric text-mode way of working. 

One question that I did not find a satisfactory answer for on my numerous days 
of research about Emacs / org-mode (however, maybe I „don’t see the wood for 
the trees“):

I want to mix information and tasks in one file. That’s how it’s supposed to 
be, as far as I understand.
I want to enter information as a journal, relatively strictly. So if I add a 
note to an appointment, I’d like to add that note not in the file area of that 
appointment, but to the end of the file, crosslinking the appointment and the 
new note. Is there a way to achieve that easily?

I know how to make tasks with the org-todo-keywords.
Now I want to mark chunks of information in that file in a similar way, but 
keep it outside of the task workflow. I’d like to have that information 
accessible and finable easily, and I want to differentiate different kinds of 
information.

Quick example:

* TODO This is my first task
Some task description goes here

* MEETINGNOTE of meeting 2015-07-02 MyCompany
** participants
*** —> John Doe
*** —> Mary Sample
** Goal
This is the description of meeting goal
** Outcome
Outcome of the meeting


* PERSON John Doe
Street address
email address
telephone

* COMPANY MyCompany
address
field of operation
employees:
- John Doe
- Mary Sample

* INFO 2015-07-01 John Doe does not want to work with Emacs

* NOTE 2015-07-02 16:20 called John on the phone
here go some notes about the telephone call with John



So for example:

- I’d like to have all the info (cross)linked, so that if I click e.g. on any 
occurrence of „John Doe“ I’d like to see a list of matches that mention John 
Doe: his PERSON entry, the notes of meetings he participated, the company he is 
an employee of etc. How can I mark up info in a way that Emacs or org links 
such info? Or isn’t this possible? Do I have to use Gnowsys or something like 
that for this?

- I’d like to be able to search all „PERSON“ entries for a specific name.

- I’d like to be able to archive chunks of information, e.g. a MEETINGNOTE 
that’s obsolete, equally as I can do it with tasks

- I’d like to filter, i.e. have Emacs only show me e.g. the „MEETINGNOTES“ 
entries with all their text, but filter out everything else. Maybe even only 
„MEETINGNOTES“ with tag „XY“… combined filtering. Possible via Agenda, as I 
understand it, at least partially. Matching tags and combinations of tags etc.

Fot those of you who owned (or still own) a HP 200LX Palmtop and use Andreas 
Garzotto’s excellent PIM/PE on it (PE was a text editor that was partially 
inspired by Emacs and PIM was quite similar to org-mode, although PIM existed 
prior to org-mode): I’d like to do something similar with Emacs / org that was 
possible with PIM/PE. :-)

Thanks for any hints, pointers and ideas,

Daniel