Re: columnview dynamic block - different time summing behaviour for EFFORT and CLOCKSUM

[Ihor Radchenko]

Alexander Adolf <alexander.adolf@condition-alpha.com> writes:

> it seems that the time summing behaviour of columnview dynamic blocks is
> different for CLOCKSUM than for EFFORT columns with respect to how the
> contributions from sub-headlines are handled. When summing up CLOCKSUM
> columns, a parent headline can have its own clocked time, which gets
> added to the sum of its sub-items' clocked times to produce its CLOCKSUM
> value. When summing up EFFORT columns, any effort a parent headline may
> have been manually assigned gets overwritten with the sum of its
> sub-items' efforts, however. In the example at the end of this message,
> compare the results for tasks A and D. If you change the effort for
> either task B or C, and then update the dynamic block, the EFFORT in the
> property drawer of task A will get overwritten with the new sum of B's
> and C's efforts.
>
> I'd have two questions regarding this:
>
> Does anyone recall the rationale for this different behaviour?

The "default" behaviour is to store summary of all the child property
value in each parent.

For example, starting from

#+COLUMNS: %ITEM%EFFORT{:}
* 1
:PROPERTIES:
:EFFORT:   0:00
:END:
** 1.1
:PROPERTIES:
:EFFORT:   0:20
:END:
** 1.2
:PROPERTIES:
:EFFORT:   0:20
:END:

after generating column view, you will get

* 1
:PROPERTIES:
:EFFORT:   0:40
:END:
...

This is, however, not possible for CLOCKSUM because clocksum is not an
actual property, but a "special" one - it is derived from logbook data.
That's why its behavior is different.

In fact, CLOCKSUM property does not support custom summaries.

> Is there any way to change the summation behaviour for either or both
> column types?

It is currently hard-coded. (Although, it is not too hard add some kind
of switch).

-- 
Ihor Radchenko // yantar92,
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