Hi again,
On Wed, Dec 02, 2020 at 02:20:53PM +0000, Adam Spiers wrote:
Hi all,
I'm currently working on adding a feature to org-agenda which allows
manual ordering of entries in combination with the existing automatic
ordering (as dictated by `org-agenda-sorting-strategy').
During my investigations I noticed that while `org-get-priority' converts
[#B] style cookies into a numeric priority which is a multiple of
1000, further adjustments are made in functions like
`org-agenda-get-scheduled' before adding this numeric priority as a
text property on the entry:
'priority (if habitp (org-habit-get-priority habitp)
(+ 99 diff (org-get-priority item)))
In this case `diff' refers to the number of days between now and when
the item was scheduled. A slightly different calculation is made in
`org-agenda-get-timestamps':
(org-add-props item props
'priority (if habit?
(org-habit-get-priority (org-habit-parse-todo))
(org-get-priority item))
I further noticed that this overloading of the internal priority by
including timestamp and habit data causes disruption to the behaviour
I imagine most users would expect from `org-agenda-sorting-strategy'.
For example, if you have `priority-down' as the first entry in the
`agenda' section and `category-keep' as the second, then differences
in the SCHEDULED timestamp are included in the priority calculation
and can therefore prevent sorting of two adjacent [#B] items by
category. This seems like a bug to me, or at least breaks the
Principle of Least Surprise.
[snipped]
Given that `org-agenda-sorting-strategy' now supports all manner of
sorting criteria, many of which are time-sensitive, I would like to
know if there is any reason not to remove this overloading of the
priority calculation, i.e. decoupling it to depend purely on the
result of `org-get-priority' and `org-habit-get-priority'?
If fact, perhaps we could go one step further and add support for new
habit-priority-{up,down} sorters to `org-agenda-sorting-strategy', so
that the priority-{up,down} sorters sort purely by the priority cookie
and nothing else?
Gently bumping this as I didn't get any replies yet. I would like to
continue working on a solution, but obviously don't want to waste time
on something which would be rejected.
If it is considered important to preserve the exact behaviour
currently offered by `org-agenda-sorting-strategy' then I would
propose the following:
- Keep the existing priority-{up,down} which combine priority cookies
with timestamp data and the result from `org-habit-get-priority',
but probably also deprecate it and remove it from the default value.
- Introduce new priority-cookie-{up,down} sorters which operate purely
on [#A] and [#1] style priority cookies and nothing else.
This would facilitate decoupling of the sortable criteria whilst
remaining backwards compatible.
Does this sound reasonable? I am keen to proceed very soon (ideally
over the Xmas break). I have already written some new ert tests for
`org-agenda-sorting-strategy' which would be included in any submitted
patches.
Thanks!
Adam