Re: Agenda in MobileOrg for Android

[Marcin Borkowski <mbork@wmi.amu.edu.pl>]

Dnia 2013-04-08, o godz. 01:20:34
James Harkins < jamshark70@gmail.com> napisał(a):

> Marcin Borkowski <mbork <at> wmi.amu.edu.pl> writes:
> 
> > > 2. When I choose the menu and then "Outline", I can see the
> > > outline. But when I choose menu and then "Agenda", I see nothing
> > > but the title ("Agenda") and a "plus" button in the upper right
> > > corner.
> > >
> > > (a) Shouldn't there be an agenda on the screen?
> 
> No, not yet. This is a new feature, in which you define agenda views
> in MobileOrg, and MobileOrg will refresh those agendas dynamically
> based on its own database. You'll see your MobileOrg edits
> immediately, without syncing back to emacs. (This also means John's
> guess about choosing agenda views to push from emacs is not correct.
> "Pushed" agendas appear under the Agendas heading in the outline.
> Dynamic agendas are separate.)
> 
> If you don't define dynamic agendas within MobileOrg, then the list
> of available dynamic agendas would be empty. What's missing is
> explanatory text onscreen.
> 
> This feature indeed has some serious bugs in the currently released
> version (beta, btw -- pre-1.0) but I just saw a notice on the
> MobileOrg Android mailing list that a fix was just checked into the
> source repository.

I see.

> > the key seems to be "too hard to use efficiently"...  I am afraid
> > that
> MobileOrg for Android) is indeed much more difficult to use than the
> Emacs version.  The strength of Org is that it is easy to use (and
> efficient in terms of keystrokes etc.).
> 
> It might be appropriate to discuss specific use cases that could be
> improved, instead of just stating "it's not efficient." (That's more
> polite, but it conveys about the same amount of useful information as
> "it sucks" -- i.e., none at all).

I know - but I didn't include the details because I can't remember them
now (I uninstalled MobileOrg a while ago).  Of course, I can check it
and report on the MobileOrg mailing list.

> You did mention syncing. MobileOrg uses a database internally. Maybe
> that's easier to manage in java? I'm only speculating, don't know the
> reason for sure. It's a reasonable guess that parsing org files in
> java could be more difficult than in ELisp. Anyway, I haven't found
> the syncing requirement to be especially onerous. At least, the
> benefits of MobileOrg are significant enough for me that syncing does
> not negate them.

Well, it would be true, if syncing worked...  But (at least for me) it
didn't - more often than not it crashed with a mysterious error message
and I lost my captures.  I will try to reinstall MobileOrg and try to
reproduce it and report, too.

For the database vs text files: I'm still not convinced.  But life has
taught me that if something is done in some way, there might be a
reason for that I don't know or understand, so I'm not claiming that
the syncing stuff is a bad idea - only that *I* don't get the rationale
behind it.  (The argument with a database does not convince me, though
it might be an efficiency issue - *that* would be some argument, but
I'm also speculating here.)

> E.g., my department sent a sms to my phone explaining upcoming
> holiday schedules. I copied the text into a new node (while away from
> the computer) and later, synced. When some students asked what was up
> with the schedule, it was just a couple of taps on my phone to
> navigate the headings and read it.
> 
> The point being, MobileOrg is actually quite useful for capturing
> notes, adding calendar events etc on-the-go, and integrating that
> into the emacs org files.

Yes and no.  I don't mean that "it sucks" (and by all means I don't
want to be impolite to anyone!), I meant that if I were doing it, I
would probably do it another way.  (It doesn't even mean that I'm wiser
than the developers of MobileOrg - after all, they did it and I did
not, and I have at least two versions - one, imaginary, in my mind, and
another one, written by them - I can compare them mentally etc.  They
were the first ones - the pioneers - and even if I manage to write my
own version (which I'm going to try to do anyway, as a learning
project), I can use the experience accumulated in the current version
of MobileOrg, which gives me a head start.)

> hjh

Regards,

-- 
Marcin Borkowski
http://octd.wmi.amu.edu.pl/en/Marcin_Borkowski
Adam Mickiewicz University