Re: [emacs-wiki-discuss] Remembering: Thoughts on PlannerMode as an organizer

[Yvonne Thomson]

At Thu, 25 Mar 2004 16:21:56 -0500,
pll+ew  wrote:
> 
> 
> >>>>> On Thu, 25 Mar 2004, "Sacha" == Sacha Chua wrote:
> 
>   Sacha> I don't have to switch to another application to create a
>   Sacha> task. I can just hit a keyboard shortcut. Planner uses a
>   Sacha> minibuffer to get the task description. My windows are not
>   Sacha> rearranged in any way, and I can look at the data that's
>   Sacha> relevant to a task. Not only that, tasks automatically pick
>   Sacha> up context clues, like whom I'm talking to on IRC or the file
>   Sacha> I'm editing at the moment. This cuts down on the explicit
>   Sacha> context I need to include and makes it easier for me to bring
>   Sacha> up the task again.
> 
> Can you perhaps explain how this works?  I'm in the process of
> re-evaluating the way I work, and am leaning heavily (as a result of
> this e-mail list) towards doing more with Emacs.  I already use Emacs 
> for all my editing, and I've started playing around with planner, 
> which I think I'm going to become addicted to, along with emacs-wiki.
> 
> My current e-mail life is in exmh, but I'm thinking of emacs and
> wanderlust for IMAP instead and trying to figure out BBDB for contacts
> management.
> 

Hi. I'm not Sacha, but I think I'll take a stab at explaining this
one. Both the context finding stuff when you create a task and the
context when you create a note are gained the same way. It sounds like
black magic, but it turns out not to be.

All that happens is, planner has a list of functions, planner-annotation
functions. When you hit create task from buffer, or remember, it goes
through this list from top to bottom. The first one that returns true is
the one it uses. 

For example, if you're in Wanderlust, and you hit the key you've bound
to planner-create-task-from-buffer, it looks at this list and does
something like this.  Is it an erc
buffer? No. Is it a bbdb buffer? No. Are we in w3m? No. Are we in
Wanderlust? Yes. So this function succeeds. So it stops searching and
runs the annotation function for Wanderlust, which in this case finds out
who the message's from and what the message id of the message is. It
then takes those and constructs a link back to that message, with a link
title something like email from joe blogs. 

So, you've read the email from Joe Blogs. He's asked you to do
something, you've hit your key to add that task to your list of things
to do. So what you end up with is a description of the task, and a link
back to what made you create the task in the first place.

The same happens with remember, except that it ends up in the notes
section of your page instead. Does this help at all? Or, as I think,
have I just served to confuse myself and everyone else? <grin>.