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

2015-07-08 Thread Daniel Hertrich
Dear John,

also to you, many thanks for your time to answer so many questions of mine.
I’ll comment them below:


 Am 03.07.2015 um 16:02 schrieb John Kitchin jkitc...@andrew.cmu.edu:
 
 This all sounds doable, but it will take some work ;)
 

I guessed so. ;-) But that’s the trade-off. Take some ready-made software that 
works out of the box, but then it won’t work as you want it to work. The other 
extreme is to program a personalized solution entirely on your own. I have done 
this before. But I hope Emacs is something in-between. The framework is there, 
and it’s only a matter of writing some scripts to make it work exaclty as I 
wish.
The problem is also, that I don’t know exactly in advance how I’d like it to 
work. These wishes will evolve with time. Another advantage of scripting an 
existend application. I can adapt it easier to new requirements than re-writing 
an entire application. ;-)


 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
 
 I think you should probably use a tag of :MEETINGNOTE: here, instead of
 a TODO keyword like this. TODO keywords imply to me some kind of
 changeable state not a type of content. Alteratively you could make it a
 property.
 
 with your curson on the headline, type C-c C-c and enter MEETINGNOTE to
 add the tag.

I have to press „TAB“ („free“) before entering a new tag. Might be because I 
already defined some tags to be used in quick access.
You are right, somehow a tag is more suuitable for this kind of marking 
information. 
However, I just came across the possiblitiy of defining several TODO keyword 
workflows in parallel. I could imagine to have one for my own todos (TODO), one 
for other people’s todos that I’m monitoring (TASK) and maybe also one for 
information that expires or becomes outdated. Like this, partially taken from 
the org-secretary explanation, but adapted by me:

(setq org-todo-keywords
  '((sequence TODO(t) | DONE(d) CANCELLED(c))
(sequence TASK(f) | DONE(d))
(sequence „INFO(i) |“ „INFO-EXPIRED(e

Or would you consider this total nonsense? I know there is the archiving 
feature. Maybe expired info should be archived instead of maker „expired“? ;-)

This brings me to another idea: Maybe you know the outliner „NoteCase Pro“ 
(www.notecasepro.com http://www.notecasepro.com/). I have written some 
plugins for it (www.notecaseproplugins.com 
http://www.notecaseproplugins.com/), one of them being a plugin for helping 
to keep your files clean. One way to keep them clean is to assign an expiry 
date to every chunk of information in the file. If you generate an entry, you 
are automatically asked to quickly choose a validity time span (only a rough 
one, so you don't need to think too much at this point: one day, one week, one 
month, one year, 5 years, forever). Based on your selection, the plugin sets 
the corresponding date in the ffuture as expiry date for this piece of 
information. Everytime you open your file, the plugin searches for expired info 
and present only one expired info per session (so you are not overwhelemed by 
having to make decisions) to you and lets you choose to archive it, prolong the 
validity time span or to delete the expiry date entirely.

I think in times of gigantic flood of information we need such mechanisms to be 
able to maintain our information.

Does something like this exist for Emacs, too? Or is it already easily possible 
by using dates and the agenda…?


 
 ** 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
 
 PERSON should also be a tag, or look at org-contacts, where those bits
 in the body would be stored as properties.


org-contacts seems to have a similar use case as BBDB (big brother data base). 
What is better? :-D I know, this is a very sloppy question.
New attempt: Which one would you recommend? I’d like to have a full-fledged 
contacts database that i’d like to sync with CardDAV servers and possibly 
iCloud, so that ai can use the same address data in any email client / 
telephone assistance solution on the Mac, and also inside Emacs for referring 
to todos etc., maybe to write letters inside Emacs with LaTex export and 
automatic inclusion of the snail mail address of the person etc. etc. All on a 
Mac. (Currently using Aquamacs, but maybe switching to Emacs Mac Port later, as 
that seems to be more standard, more stable and also less performance-hungry).

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

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

2015-07-08 Thread Daniel Hertrich

 Am 05.07.2015 um 04:21 schrieb Haider Rizvi hari...@gmail.com:
 
 I use a yasnippet for writing down my meeting minutes, that also
 creates some properties. Daniel may find it useful.

Indeed I do! 
This is great, and will probably have its place in my future setup.
I will look into this.

Thanks,
Daniel





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

2015-07-08 Thread Daniel Hertrich
Dear Pascal,

thanks for your answer.
org-secretary looks vey interesting. I have already looked into this before, 
but not deeply enough (because I didn’t understand most of it yet, but now my 
Emacs knowledge is good enough to understand most of it). Personalized agendas 
will definitly be a component of my new system! Thanks!

Daniel



 Am 03.07.2015 um 14:25 schrieb Pascal Fleury pas...@telefleuries.com:
 
 I think properties can be used for this. I personally like the org-secretary 
 module, described nicely here by the author: 
 http://juanreyero.com/article/emacs/org-teams.html 
 http://juanreyero.com/article/emacs/org-teams.html
 Also, personalized agendas 
 http://orgmode.org/manual/Storing-searches.html#Storing-searches for your 
 entire set of org-files is useful here.



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

2015-07-08 Thread John Kitchin

Daniel Hertrich writes:

 Dear John,

 also to you, many thanks for your time to answer so many questions of mine.
 I’ll comment them below:


 Am 03.07.2015 um 16:02 schrieb John Kitchin jkitc...@andrew.cmu.edu:

 This all sounds doable, but it will take some work ;)


 I guessed so. ;-) But that’s the trade-off. Take some ready-made software 
 that works out of the box, but then it won’t work as you want it to work. The 
 other extreme is to program a personalized solution entirely on your own. I 
 have done this before. But I hope Emacs is something in-between. The 
 framework is there, and it’s only a matter of writing some scripts to make it 
 work exaclty as I wish.
 The problem is also, that I don’t know exactly in advance how I’d like
 it to work. These wishes will evolve with time. Another advantage of
 scripting an existend application. I can adapt it easier to new
 requirements than re-writing an entire application. ;-)

I think Emacs+org-mode is somewhere in the middle there.


 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.

You might look at inlinetasks. C-c C-x t
you can put headline like items in a headline that doesn't change the
headline level.


 Quick example:

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

 * MEETINGNOTE of meeting 2015-07-02 MyCompany

 I think you should probably use a tag of :MEETINGNOTE: here, instead of
 a TODO keyword like this. TODO keywords imply to me some kind of
 changeable state not a type of content. Alteratively you could make it a
 property.

 with your curson on the headline, type C-c C-c and enter MEETINGNOTE to
 add the tag.

 I have to press „TAB“ („free“) before entering a new tag. Might be
 because I already defined some tags to be used in quick access.

 You are right, somehow a tag is more suuitable for this kind of marking 
 information.
 However, I just came across the possiblitiy of defining several TODO keyword 
 workflows in parallel. I could imagine to have one for my own todos (TODO), 
 one for other people’s todos that I’m monitoring (TASK) and maybe also one 
 for information that expires or becomes outdated. Like this, partially taken 
 from the org-secretary explanation, but adapted by me:

 (setq org-todo-keywords
   '((sequence TODO(t) | DONE(d) CANCELLED(c))
 (sequence TASK(f) | DONE(d))
 (sequence „INFO(i) |“ „INFO-EXPIRED(e

This is certainly reasonable. I use this for various states of
proposals and manuscripts. For example, just in a file called
manuscripts.org, I have this at the top:

#+TODO: TODO PREPARATION | SUBMITTED REVISING | ACCEPTED DONE REJECTED

and in proposals.org:
#+TODO: TODO PENDING | DONE DECLINED AWARDED EXPIRED

In my mind TODO keywords should represent states of a headline, not
categories (which I use tags for). Although states can also be used as a
category, e.g. all PENDING proposals.

I think the INFO/INFO-EXPIRED should be tags though (just my
opinion). What headline is not information? and when it is expired, it
should be archived.


 Or would you consider this total nonsense? I know there is the
 archiving feature. Maybe expired info should be archived instead of
 maker „expired“? ;-)

The point of archiving in org-mode is to keep the information out of the
agenda. You can use a tag  ARCHIVE (C-c C-x a) for this if you want to
keep the headline in the file, or setup archiving to move the headline
to a new file with C-c C-x C-a.


 This brings me to another idea: Maybe you know the outliner „NoteCase
 Pro“ (www.notecasepro.com http://www.notecasepro.com/). I have
 written some plugins for it (www.notecaseproplugins.com
 http://www.notecaseproplugins.com/), one of them being a plugin for
 helping to keep your files clean. One way to keep them clean is to
 assign an expiry date to every chunk of information in the file. If
 you generate an entry, you are automatically asked to quickly choose a
 validity time span (only a rough one, so you don't need to think too
 much at this point: one day, one week, one month, one year, 5 years,
 forever). Based on your selection, the plugin sets the corresponding
 date in the ffuture as expiry date for this piece of
 information. Everytime you open your file, the plugin searches for
 expired info and present only one expired info per session (so you are
 not overwhelemed by having to make decisions) to you and lets you
 choose to archive it, prolong the validity time span or to delete the
 expiry date entirely.

You could pretty easily expire headlines based on a date. see
http://orgmode.org/w/?p=org-mode.git;a=blob_plain;f=contrib/lisp/org-expiry.el;hb=HEAD


 I think in times of gigantic flood of information we need such mechanisms to 
 be able to maintain our information.

 Does 

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

2015-07-04 Thread Haider Rizvi
Pascal Fleury pas...@telefleuries.com writes:

 I think properties can be used for this. 

I use a yasnippet for writing down my meeting minutes, that also
creates some properties. Daniel may find it useful.

# -*- mode: snippet -*-
# name : mtgmins
# key : mtgmins
# contributor: Haider Rizvi
# --
`(org-insert-heading nil)`[`(format-time-string %Y-%m-%d %a (current-time))`] 
${1:Meeting title}
Attendees: Haider, ${2:Attendees}
`(org-set-property STYLE Meeting minutes)` `(org-set-property STARTED 
(format-time-string [%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S] (current-time)))`


- Haider




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

2015-07-03 Thread John Kitchin
This all sounds doable, but it will take some work ;)

 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

I think you should probably use a tag of :MEETINGNOTE: here, instead of
a TODO keyword like this. TODO keywords imply to me some kind of
changeable state not a type of content. Alteratively you could make it a
property.

with your curson on the headline, type C-c C-c and enter MEETINGNOTE to
add the tag.

 ** 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

PERSON should also be a tag, or look at org-contacts, where those bits
in the body would be stored as properties.

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

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

You should use org dates like [2015-07-01] which will make them
clickable. I think INFO here should be a tag too.


 * 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?

This is not totally possible, org-mode does not know how to make John
Doe clickable unless you make a special link.  but see: 
http://kitchingroup.cheme.cmu.edu/blog/2015/06/22/Clickable-org-contacts-in-text-files/


 - I’d like to be able to search all „PERSON“ entries for a specific
 name.
See org-contacts. i integrated something like this into helm:
http://kitchingroup.cheme.cmu.edu/blog/2015/03/14/A-helm-mu4e-contact-selector/
which I use all the time.


 - 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

C-c C-x a will archive a headline. you can only archive headlines, not
pieces of text.


 - 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.

This sounds pretty doable with tag/property searches.


 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



--
Professor John Kitchin
Doherty Hall A207F
Department of Chemical Engineering
Carnegie Mellon University
Pittsburgh, PA 15213
412-268-7803
@johnkitchin
http://kitchingroup.cheme.cmu.edu



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

2015-07-03 Thread Pascal Fleury
I think properties can be used for this. I personally like the
org-secretary module, described nicely here by the author:
http://juanreyero.com/article/emacs/org-teams.html
Also, personalized agendas
http://orgmode.org/manual/Storing-searches.html#Storing-searches for your
entire set of org-files is useful here.
--paf

On Fri, Jul 3, 2015 at 10:47 AM, Daniel Hertrich 
daniel@daniel-hertrich.photo wrote:

 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





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

2015-07-03 Thread 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