Agenda that shows hierarchy above matches?

Agenda that shows hierarchy above matches?

[Tilmann Singer]

Hi,

I wonder if there is way to get an agenda showing all TODO items with
the hierarchical context up to the top level.

Given an projects.org like this:

 * Project A
 ** TODO do foo
 ** TODO do bar
 ** DONE do baz
 * Project B
 ** DONE do foo
 * TODO Another small thing

An agenda view, e.g. tags match for /!TODO looks like this:

 projects: TODO do foo
 projects: TODO do bar
 projects: TODO Another small thing

In order to find out the context of the first two lines, I currently
have to go to each line and hit tab to see the corresponding location
in the org file or switch on follow mode. This is not ideal for
getting an overview over all TODO items when there are lots of such
matches because I would then need to follow each item and remember the
context. Also sometimes I would like to export an agenda to a text
file including all their parent headlines up to the top level, but no
other items of the org file.

So is there a way to get an agenda that looks similar to this:

 projects: 
 * Project A
 ** TODO do foo
 ** TODO do bar
 * TODO Another small thing

Actually org-sparse-tree is very close to what I want, but first it
only works for a single org file (which I could live with), but also
as far as I see there is no way to hide the collapsed top level
headlines which have no match - "* Project B" in the above example.


Til

Re: Agenda that shows hierarchy above matches?

[Eric S Fraga]

At Thu, 23 Jul 2009 10:29:42 +0200,
Tilmann Singer wrote:
> 
> Hi,
> 
> I wonder if there is way to get an agenda showing all TODO items with
> the hierarchical context up to the top level.

Depending on the depth of hierarchy you wish to cater for, categories
may be helpful.

> 
> Given an projects.org like this:
> 
>  * Project A
>  ** TODO do foo
>  ** TODO do bar
>  ** DONE do baz
>  * Project B
>  ** DONE do foo
>  * TODO Another small thing

add the CATEGORY property (C-c C-x p cat TAB) to A and B headings,
something like "Project A", say, and this will appear on the left of
the line in the agenda view in lieu of the file.  Categories can help
give you a single level of context.

Arbitrary levels can be achieved with tags, by the way.

HTH.

eric

Re: Agenda that shows hierarchy above matches?

[Tilmann Singer]

At Thu, 23 Jul 2009 09:56:38 +0100,
Eric S Fraga wrote:
> > Given an projects.org like this:
> > 
> >  * Project A
> >  ** TODO do foo
> >  ** TODO do bar
> >  ** DONE do baz
> >  * Project B
> >  ** DONE do foo
> >  * TODO Another small thing
> 
> add the CATEGORY property (C-c C-x p cat TAB) to A and B headings,
> something like "Project A", say, and this will appear on the left of
> the line in the agenda view in lieu of the file.  Categories can help
> give you a single level of context.

Nice, thanks. That helps for certain cases. However, sometimes I have
deeper nestings in my project files and would still like to see _all_
parent headlines of each item marked as TODO in an agenda
overview. Also setting it as category would make it necessary
duplicate the text of the headline.

I guess what I really want is a sparse tree with all top level
headlines removed that contain no match.



Til

Re: Agenda that shows hierarchy above matches?

[Carsten Dominik]

On Jul 23, 2009, at 2:21 PM, Tilmann Singer wrote:

> At Thu, 23 Jul 2009 09:56:38 +0100,
> Eric S Fraga wrote:
>>> Given an projects.org like this:
>>>
>>> * Project A
>>> ** TODO do foo
>>> ** TODO do bar
>>> ** DONE do baz
>>> * Project B
>>> ** DONE do foo
>>> * TODO Another small thing
>>
>> add the CATEGORY property (C-c C-x p cat TAB) to A and B headings,
>> something like "Project A", say, and this will appear on the left of
>> the line in the agenda view in lieu of the file.  Categories can help
>> give you a single level of context.
>
> Nice, thanks. That helps for certain cases. However, sometimes I have
> deeper nestings in my project files and would still like to see _all_
> parent headlines of each item marked as TODO in an agenda
> overview. Also setting it as category would make it necessary
> duplicate the text of the headline.
>
> I guess what I really want is a sparse tree with all top level
> headlines removed that contain no match.

What about follow mode in the agenda?

- Carsten

Re: Agenda that shows hierarchy above matches?

[Tilmann Singer]

At Mon, 3 Aug 2009 06:31:24 +0200,
Carsten Dominik wrote:
> > At Thu, 23 Jul 2009 09:56:38 +0100,
> > Eric S Fraga wrote:
> >>> Given an projects.org like this:
> >>>
> >>> * Project A
> >>> ** TODO do foo
> >>> ** TODO do bar
> >>> ** DONE do baz
> >>> * Project B
> >>> ** DONE do foo
> >>> * TODO Another small thing
> >>
> >> add the CATEGORY property (C-c C-x p cat TAB) to A and B headings,
> >> something like "Project A", say, and this will appear on the left of
> >> the line in the agenda view in lieu of the file.  Categories can help
> >> give you a single level of context.
> >
> > Nice, thanks. That helps for certain cases. However, sometimes I have
> > deeper nestings in my project files and would still like to see _all_
> > parent headlines of each item marked as TODO in an agenda
> > overview. Also setting it as category would make it necessary
> > duplicate the text of the headline.
> >
> > I guess what I really want is a sparse tree with all top level
> > headlines removed that contain no match.
> 
> What about follow mode in the agenda?

The one thing that follow mode does not do is to reveal all contexts
of all TODO or otherwise relevant items at once. Often my entries
marked as TODO have some short text that only makes sense with its
parents, such as "call again" or "reply", so when there are many of
these items in the agenda, with follow mode I can only reveal the
context of one at a time and have to keep all of the previous ones in
short memory. Which is possible to a certain degree, but eventually
reaches the limit of my short memory capacity ...

When I put all headlines under a single top-level item such as
"Projects", the sparse-tree does almost what I want (except that it
does not aggregate multiple agenda org-files). But having a single top
level parent feels a bit wrong.


Til