Re: [O] Alternatives to inlinetasks? [was: Problems created by inlinetasks in agenda views]

[Eric S Fraga]

On Friday, 27 Apr 2018 at 09:46, Bastien wrote:

[...]

> Does that make sense to you?

It does.  Thanks.

In any case, getting rid of the * END bit will be nice.  And I've
already moved to using drawers for a large number of my inline task use
cases, the ones that weren't really tasks!

-- 
Eric S Fraga via Emacs 27.0.50, Org release_9.1.6-474-g92785f


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Re: [O] Alternatives to inlinetasks? [was: Problems created by inlinetasks in agenda views]

[Bastien]

Hi Eric,

Eric S Fraga  writes:

> Using *s seems confusing as they are intended for headlines.  From a
> font lock point of view, I would have thought that ! at the start of the
> line would be easier as well.

I should have said that I don't like having a new syntax like this.

My whole point could have been "let's say headlines with more than X
stars are inline tasks, with no contents and thus, no cycling."

If we have inline tasks like "! TODO Rewrite Org's table :Code:" then
of course, they will be easy to fontify, but hard to collect for the
agenda and so on.

As we all know here, the beauty of Org is that it mixes an outliner
with a TODO list manager: inline tasks are at the frontier... they try
to escape the outliner.  I suggest that they don't so that we don't
break Org's intimate design: they can just escape recycling by having
X stars and by not having contents.

Does that make sense to you?

-- 
 Bastien

Re: [O] Alternatives to inlinetasks? [was: Problems created by inlinetasks in agenda views]

[Eric S Fraga]

On Friday, 27 Apr 2018 at 01:34, Bastien wrote:

[...]

> I'd favor a solution where inline tasks are really simple:
>
> 0. Prevent cycling for tasks with a high number of stars
>("high" being defined by the user as an option).
>
> 1. Allow TODO keywords, priority, tags, SCHEDULED and DEADLINE
>but nothing else.
>
> 2. Archiving and refiling DTRT.
>
> 3. ... and we move org-inlinetask.el outside of Org's core.
>
>  is really too much clutter and we can simplify
> things by saying "more than X stars are going to be inline tasks by
> default".

I agree with all of the above, as somebody who uses inline tasks all the
time.  I would prefer the syntax to be very simple and would find, for
instance, a line starting with optional whitespace and "! " as a task
marker, akin to comments.  Nicolas proposed !! but I see no need for
more than one...

Using *s seems confusing as they are intended for headlines.  From a
font lock point of view, I would have thought that ! at the start of the
line would be easier as well.

-- 
Eric S Fraga via Emacs 27.0.50, Org release_9.1.6-474-g92785f


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Re: [O] Alternatives to inlinetasks? [was: Problems created by inlinetasks in agenda views]

[Bastien]

Hi Nicolas and Carsten,

Carsten Dominik  writes:

> Either we keep it as the hack, or use the limitation you
> mention and get rid of the END line.

I think getting rid of the END line goes in the right direction...

> But I am not sure it is really with the trouble to replace a bad
> hack with a slightly better hack.

... but I'm definily not sure neither.

I'd favor a solution where inline tasks are really simple:

0. Prevent cycling for tasks with a high number of stars
   ("high" being defined by the user as an option).

1. Allow TODO keywords, priority, tags, SCHEDULED and DEADLINE
   but nothing else.

2. Archiving and refiling DTRT.

3. ... and we move org-inlinetask.el outside of Org's core.

 is really too much clutter and we can simplify
things by saying "more than X stars are going to be inline tasks by
default".

WDYT?

-- 
 Bastien

Re: [O] Alternatives to inlinetasks? [was: Problems created by inlinetasks in agenda views]

[Carsten Dominik]

Hi Nicolas,


On Mon, Apr 23, 2018 at 11:08 PM, Nicolas Goaziou 
wrote:

> Hello,
>
> Carsten Dominik  writes:
>
> > I would be interested to discuss a better solution.  It would be nice is
> > list items could be TODO's, but I though long and har about this back
> when,
> > and over allo those years, I could not think of anything that could be
> > implemented with reasonable effort.
>
> I think we have to make inline tasks more limited, yet still useful.
>
> One major technical drawback stems from the fact that they allow
> contents.
>
>
>   *** Foo
>   ...
>   *** END
>



>
> It means that they allow, e.g., properties (it hurts inheritance), or
> clocks that do not belong to the containing headline but to the inline
> task itself... It would be a major pain if we had to handle this
> seriously, as a core feature.
>

Yes,  I agree with this.  It is there in oder to allow fully functional
TODO entries, with scheduling and logging.  But indeed, it does
not play correctly with things like inheritance and clocking.


>
> Now, if we allow them to have no contents, it becomes much more
> manageable. It means we can still have TODO, tags, priority, but no
> clock, no properties, no log...
>
> It would also mean we would disallow SCHEDULED and DEADLINE keywords,
> but we can make an exception for those, and allow a planning line right
> after an inline task.
>
> So, basically, there would be two forms of inline tasks:
>
>   *** Foo
>
> and
>
>   *** Foo
>   SCHEDULED: <...> DEADLINE: <...>
>

Now we know why these are not properties :)


>
> With this simplification, we could manage them, probably without too
> much hassle.
>

Not a bad compromise.  It is also somewhat backward compatible,
because * END would end up being just another inline-task-like headline,
and older files would not stop working.


> If you want to associate the task some contents, you can attach, e.g.,
> some drawer below. It is not part of the inline task syntax, yet it
> could work well in practice:
>
>
>   *** TODO Foo
>   :task:
>   This is because the...
>   :end:
>
> However, there is another important drawback: they look like headlines.
> That breaks a fundamental assumption in Org: any line that doesn't start
> with an asterisk (I'm oversimplifying here) "belongs" to the first line
> starting with one above. This is simply not true with inline task, so we
> use the `org-with-limited-levels'. It kind of works, except in parts of
> Org that forgot to use it (lots of fun ahead).
>

Yes, inline task is an incomplete implementation, basically a hack.


>
> We could go further and get away from the starred syntax and the column
> 0. E.g.,
>
>   !! TODO Foo :bar:baz:
>
> The advantage is that they would integrate better with the rest of the
> document:
>
>   - Grocery list
> - Apples
> - Bread
>   !! REMINDER ...
>
> However, it would be a /lot/ more work to implement the feature shared
> with regular headlines (TODO switching, tags inheritance)... but, at
> least, they would look better.
>

What would look even better is

  - Grocery list
- Apples
- TODO Bread
  SCHEDULED: 

But I have always thought that this would be nightmarish to implement,
because the assumption that all of these special entries are nodes is
sooo deep in the code...

So I would say:

either we keep it as the hack, or use the limitation you
mention and get rid of the END line.  But I am not sure it is really
with the trouble to replace a bad hack with a slightly better hack.

Carsten




>
> Regards,
>
> --
> Nicolas Goaziou
>
>

Re: [O] Alternatives to inlinetasks? [was: Problems created by inlinetasks in agenda views]

[Rasmus]

Kaushal Modi  writes:

> On Mon, Apr 23, 2018, 5:35 PM Eric Abrahamsen 
> wrote:
>
>>
>> Would there be any consideration for an inline syntax that looks more
>> like a link? Personally, when I want inline TODOs, I want them because
>> there's a particular chunk of text that I need to do something with.
>> What about something that looks like:
>>
>> In 2005 there were approximately [[TODO: Verify this; SCHEDULED:
>> ; :statistics:][4,500]] Confucius Institutes in operation
>> worldwide.
>>
>
> How would you distinguish between regular links and such inline TODO's when
> the "link" portion is hidden?
>
> Would footnotes serve better? (I'm not a consumer of inline todos (yet?) so
> consider this suggestion with a grain of salt :))

I’d also prefer that.  I have often used inline tasks for long
discussions.

One downside would be that it would move the tast contents further away
from the main contents it’s discussing.  E.g. I have used it for
discussions with co-authors and I think they’d maybe find footnotes
confusing.  For just me, footnotes TODOS would be great.

Note, you can also have inline todos: [[TODO::Inline todo text]].

Rasmus

-- 
Vote for proprietary math!

Re: [O] Alternatives to inlinetasks? [was: Problems created by inlinetasks in agenda views]

[Eric Abrahamsen]

Kaushal Modi  writes:

> On Mon, Apr 23, 2018, 5:35 PM Eric Abrahamsen
>  wrote:
>
> Would there be any consideration for an inline syntax that looks
> more
> like a link? Personally, when I want inline TODOs, I want them
> because
> there's a particular chunk of text that I need to do something
> with.
> What about something that looks like:
>
> In 2005 there were approximately [[TODO: Verify this; SCHEDULED:
> ; :statistics:][4,500]] Confucius Institutes in
> operation
> worldwide.
>
> How would you distinguish between regular links and such inline TODO's
> when the "link" portion is hidden?

I guess I wouldn't, personally, I'd just use the agenda to interact with
the TODOs. But there could be a separate option allowing users to
control the visibility of inline TODOs independently.

I dunno, I was just throwing this out there :)

> Would footnotes serve better? (I'm not a consumer of inline todos
> (yet?) so consider this suggestion with a grain of salt :))

That's not a bad idea either! I do like links' ability to connect to a
specific run of text, but this would also work.

Eric

Re: [O] Alternatives to inlinetasks? [was: Problems created by inlinetasks in agenda views]

[Kaushal Modi]

On Mon, Apr 23, 2018, 5:35 PM Eric Abrahamsen 
wrote:

>
> Would there be any consideration for an inline syntax that looks more
> like a link? Personally, when I want inline TODOs, I want them because
> there's a particular chunk of text that I need to do something with.
> What about something that looks like:
>
> In 2005 there were approximately [[TODO: Verify this; SCHEDULED:
> ; :statistics:][4,500]] Confucius Institutes in operation
> worldwide.
>

How would you distinguish between regular links and such inline TODO's when
the "link" portion is hidden?

Would footnotes serve better? (I'm not a consumer of inline todos (yet?) so
consider this suggestion with a grain of salt :))

=
some text[todo:1]

* Inline TODOs (special heading like Footnotes)
[todo:1]: My todo
=

> --

Kaushal Modi

Re: [O] Alternatives to inlinetasks? [was: Problems created by inlinetasks in agenda views]

[Eric Abrahamsen]

Nicolas Goaziou  writes:

> Hello,
>
> Carsten Dominik  writes:
>
>> I would be interested to discuss a better solution.  It would be nice is
>> list items could be TODO's, but I though long and har about this back when,
>> and over allo those years, I could not think of anything that could be
>> implemented with reasonable effort.
>
> I think we have to make inline tasks more limited, yet still useful.
>
> One major technical drawback stems from the fact that they allow
> contents.
>
>
>   *** Foo
>   ...
>   *** END
>
> It means that they allow, e.g., properties (it hurts inheritance), or
> clocks that do not belong to the containing headline but to the inline
> task itself... It would be a major pain if we had to handle this
> seriously, as a core feature.
>
> Now, if we allow them to have no contents, it becomes much more
> manageable. It means we can still have TODO, tags, priority, but no
> clock, no properties, no log...

Would there be any consideration for an inline syntax that looks more
like a link? Personally, when I want inline TODOs, I want them because
there's a particular chunk of text that I need to do something with.
What about something that looks like:

In 2005 there were approximately [[TODO: Verify this; SCHEDULED:
; :statistics:][4,500]] Confucius Institutes in operation
worldwide.

That's kind of made-up, but the one-line syntax seems like it would be
well suited to providing tags, priority, scheduling, etc., but none of
the more bulky attributes that are part of a proper headline.

WDYT?

Eric

Re: [O] Alternatives to inlinetasks? [was: Problems created by inlinetasks in agenda views]

[Nicolas Goaziou]

Hello,

Carsten Dominik  writes:

> I would be interested to discuss a better solution.  It would be nice is
> list items could be TODO's, but I though long and har about this back when,
> and over allo those years, I could not think of anything that could be
> implemented with reasonable effort.

I think we have to make inline tasks more limited, yet still useful.

One major technical drawback stems from the fact that they allow
contents.


  *** Foo
  ...
  *** END

It means that they allow, e.g., properties (it hurts inheritance), or
clocks that do not belong to the containing headline but to the inline
task itself... It would be a major pain if we had to handle this
seriously, as a core feature.

Now, if we allow them to have no contents, it becomes much more
manageable. It means we can still have TODO, tags, priority, but no
clock, no properties, no log...

It would also mean we would disallow SCHEDULED and DEADLINE keywords,
but we can make an exception for those, and allow a planning line right
after an inline task.

So, basically, there would be two forms of inline tasks:

  *** Foo

and

  *** Foo
  SCHEDULED: <...> DEADLINE: <...>

With this simplification, we could manage them, probably without too
much hassle.

If you want to associate the task some contents, you can attach, e.g.,
some drawer below. It is not part of the inline task syntax, yet it
could work well in practice:


  *** TODO Foo
  :task:
  This is because the...
  :end:

However, there is another important drawback: they look like headlines.
That breaks a fundamental assumption in Org: any line that doesn't start
with an asterisk (I'm oversimplifying here) "belongs" to the first line
starting with one above. This is simply not true with inline task, so we
use the `org-with-limited-levels'. It kind of works, except in parts of
Org that forgot to use it (lots of fun ahead).

We could go further and get away from the starred syntax and the column
0. E.g.,

  !! TODO Foo :bar:baz:

The advantage is that they would integrate better with the rest of the
document:

  - Grocery list
- Apples
- Bread
  !! REMINDER ...

However, it would be a /lot/ more work to implement the feature shared
with regular headlines (TODO switching, tags inheritance)... but, at
least, they would look better.

Regards,

-- 
Nicolas Goaziou

Re: [O] Alternatives to inlinetasks? [was: Problems created by inlinetasks in agenda views]

[Carsten Dominik]

On Mon, Apr 23, 2018 at 4:21 PM, Eric S Fraga  wrote:

> On Monday, 23 Apr 2018 at 15:50, alain.coch...@unistra.fr wrote:
> > In fact, my use of inelintaks seems to me so basic (I faced the
> > problem since my day 1 with org-mode) that maybe another solution that
> > I overlooked would work for me.  I'll explain my problem in the hope
> > that someone might be able to help.
>
> From what you describe, inline tasks are indeed the way to go.  If/when
> Nicolas proposes a different syntax, we may need to make changes to our
> files, of course.
>

I would be interested to discuss a better solution.  It would be nice is
list items could be TODO's, but I though long and har about this back when,
and over allo those years, I could not think of anything that could be
implemented with reasonable effort.

Carsten


>
> Other solutions, e.g. drawers, are for different use cases that many of
> us have solved by using inline tasks for what they weren't really
> intended...
>
> --
> Eric S Fraga via Emacs 27.0.50, Org release_9.1.6-419-g52ba1a
>

Re: [O] Alternatives to inlinetasks? [was: Problems created by inlinetasks in agenda views]

[Eric S Fraga]

On Monday, 23 Apr 2018 at 15:50, alain.coch...@unistra.fr wrote:
> In fact, my use of inelintaks seems to me so basic (I faced the
> problem since my day 1 with org-mode) that maybe another solution that
> I overlooked would work for me.  I'll explain my problem in the hope
> that someone might be able to help.

From what you describe, inline tasks are indeed the way to go.  If/when
Nicolas proposes a different syntax, we may need to make changes to our
files, of course.

Other solutions, e.g. drawers, are for different use cases that many of
us have solved by using inline tasks for what they weren't really
intended...

-- 
Eric S Fraga via Emacs 27.0.50, Org release_9.1.6-419-g52ba1a


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[O] Alternatives to inlinetasks? [was: Problems created by inlinetasks in agenda views]

[Alain . Cochard]

Nicolas Goaziou writes on Mon 16 Apr 2018 14:08:

 > Inlinetasks has a lot of glitches [...]. It is not ready for prime
 > time.  Worse, I don't think its design is good, either.

I would be glad to be able to use an alternative.  I see that
"drawers" are mentioned by some of you experts, but it is not clear to
me if this would be suited for me -- in particular, the fact that they
"can contain anything but a headline and another drawer" is not very
appealing...

In fact, my use of inelintaks seems to me so basic (I faced the
problem since my day 1 with org-mode) that maybe another solution that
I overlooked would work for me.  I'll explain my problem in the hope
that someone might be able to help.

Say I am working on

* wave propagation   :numerical_analysis:

At some point, comes an incidental, purely mathematical issue, say

  check that 1+1~2 (for this, try that or that).

My first reflex was to try a list item like

  - TODO check that 1+1~2   :maths:basics:
for this, try that or that.
   
which of course does not work.

This maths issue does not really deserve its own header.  It's really
inconvenient to force it because it requires duplicating some context,
the extent of which must be evaluated (might take time) and which,
besides, may change along time.  Or it requires internal linking,
which also takes time to set up.

I envisioned

* TODO wave propagation   :numerical_analysis:
** main stuff
** TODO check that 1+1~2   :maths:basics:
   for this, try that or that.
** main stuff, continued

which is unpractical, and really ugly, especially when many such
issues arise...

For some time I used the also very inelegant:

* TODO wave propagation   :numerical_analysis:maths:basics:
  the TODO is just for :maths:basics:, search for string XXX
  [...]
  XXX check that 1+1~2; for this, try that or that.
  [...]

until I was fed up and put more effort in the google search, which
finally led me to the org FAQ and inelinetasks...

So can someone suggest attractive alternatives?

Regards,
alain





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