Re: forms and org-mode

[Tim Cross]

OK, but I'm still a little unclear exactly what you are asking about.

If it is just a general question about whether Emacs Forms could be used
for data input into an org table, the basic answer is yes, I think so.

If your asking if anyone has done this - not that I'm aware of.

If your asking how hard it would be to do, well that depends.

The biggest challenge I can see is that Emacs forms expects a data file
which  just consists of one record per line where each record is
separated by a specific character. That part is not too hard. However,
where things might get tricky is if you want to keep the data in an org
file with other org data.

I imagine you could maintain a table in a data file fairly easily. You
can use the org '|' as the field separators and you would likely need to
write an input and output filter function to remove white space and add
it back on writing. None of this would be too hard.

However, if you wanted an emacs forms interface to one or more tables
inside a normal org file, it might be more tricky. You would need a far
more sophisticated input/output filters and possibly need to narrow the
file or do something else to help the filter functions target the data.

It has been many years since I used Emacs Forms. From memory, I gave up
on them as the level of maintenance exceeded the usefulness. I guess it
all really depends on how much data you need to edit and how predictable
the target data files are.

.
Jude DaShiell <jdashiel@panix.com> writes:

> My reason for using forms to do data input into org tables is to minimize
> errors in the data input to the org tables.
>
> On Sat, 21 Aug 2021, Tim Cross wrote:
>
>>
>> So you are asking about using Emacs forms for data input into an org
>> table?
>>
>> Just not clear on what exactly your asking about.
>>
>> Jude DaShiell <jdashiel@panix.com> writes:
>>
>> > A table with a time stamp column, a text column for notes and an interval
>> > column rounded to nearest hour.  Any statistics to be calculated on that
>> > intervals column.
>> >
>> >
>> > On Sat, 21 Aug 2021, Ihor Radchenko wrote:
>> >
>> >> Can you elaborate?
>> >>
>> >>
>>
>>
>>