Sibling visibility when accessing an item from the agenda

Sibling visibility when accessing an item from the agenda

[James Harkins]

Hi,

What is the setting to control the visibility of the 4th-level siblings here?

How I got to this point:

- All headings collapsed (only top-level visible)

- Go to the agenda week view

- Put the cursor on the entry for "Elec. 2a 01" and hit return.

The catch is... my school requires me to take notes on every class session. That means I need to type plain text underneath this heading. But, org has "helpfully" marked this area to be invisible. If I put the cursor on the flush-left ellipsis and hit return to open up some space, I don't see the open space. Same if I put the cursor after the ellipsis for the properties drawer.

That is, org thinks accessing an item from the agenda is a read-only operation, but I need to write into it -- org's assumption is invalid.

So the only way I currently know to enter the text is to go up to the parent level, collapse it, and expand it to show all the siblings... for 14 class sessions every week. That is going to get really old.

There must be a way to get org to show the sibling headings of the one that was selected from the agenda.

Thanks,
hjh

Re: Sibling visibility when accessing an item from the agenda

[James Harkins]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1321 bytes --]

Sorry, I had meant to attach a screenshot. Here it is.
James

---- On Sat, 16 Sep 2017 09:47:45 +0800 James Harkins <jamshark70@zoho.com> wrote ---- 
> Hi, 
>  
> What is the setting to control the visibility of the 4th-level siblings here? 
>  
> How I got to this point: 
>  
> - All headings collapsed (only top-level visible) 
>  
> - Go to the agenda week view 
>  
> - Put the cursor on the entry for "Elec. 2a 01" and hit return. 
>  
> The catch is... my school requires me to take notes on every class session. That means I need to type plain text underneath this heading. But, org has "helpfully" marked this area to be invisible. If I put the cursor on the flush-left ellipsis and hit return to open up some space, I don't see the open space. Same if I put the cursor after the ellipsis for the properties drawer. 
>  
> That is, org thinks accessing an item from the agenda is a read-only operation, but I need to write into it -- org's assumption is invalid. 
>  
> So the only way I currently know to enter the text is to go up to the parent level, collapse it, and expand it to show all the siblings... for 14 class sessions every week. That is going to get really old. 
>  
> There must be a way to get org to show the sibling headings of the one that was selected from the agenda. 
>  
> Thanks, 
> hjh 

[-- Attachment #2: org-ellipses.png --]
[-- Type: image/png, Size: 11241 bytes --]

Re: Sibling visibility when accessing an item from the agenda

[James Harkins]

> What is the setting to control the visibility of the 4th-level siblings here? 
>  
> How I got to this point: 
>  
> - All headings collapsed (only top-level visible) 
> - Go to the agenda week view 
> - Put the cursor on the entry for "Elec. 2a 01" and hit return. 

A bit of poking around, and I found I can use C-c C-r as a workaround.

But... I've been using this system for a few years now, and today is the first time I needed to look for C-c C-r.

I'm quite sure in the past, when jumping from the agenda to a specific heading, org would show the heading *and* the next sibling (and hide the others, which is OK with me). But today, magically, in the middle of a session, the behavior changed. I didn't change any customization variables, just, one minute it was fine and the next it wasn't.

Such a mystery...
hjh

Re: Sibling visibility when accessing an item from the agenda

[Nicolas Goaziou]

Hello,

James Harkins <jamshark70@zoho.com> writes:

>> What is the setting to control the visibility of the 4th-level siblings here? 
>>  
>> How I got to this point: 
>>  
>> - All headings collapsed (only top-level visible) 
>> - Go to the agenda week view 
>> - Put the cursor on the entry for "Elec. 2a 01" and hit return. 
>
> A bit of poking around, and I found I can use C-c C-r as a workaround.
>
> But... I've been using this system for a few years now, and today is
> the first time I needed to look for C-c C-r.
>
> I'm quite sure in the past, when jumping from the agenda to a specific
> heading, org would show the heading *and* the next sibling (and hide
> the others, which is OK with me). But today, magically, in the middle
> of a session, the behavior changed. I didn't change any customization
> variables, just, one minute it was fine and the next it wasn't.

Does customizing `org-show-context-detail' fix your issues?

Regards,

-- 
Nicolas Goaziou

Re: Sibling visibility when accessing an item from the agenda

[James Harkins]

---- On Sat, 16 Sep 2017 15:30:52 +0800 Nicolas Goaziou <mail@nicolasgoaziou.fr> wrote ---- 
> Does customizing `org-show-context-detail' fix your issues? 

Hi,

Thanks, it would have taken me quite some time to find that.

The default was "ancestors." Changing it to "local" works well for me.

I'm puzzled because, for years, it was behaving as I wanted. I believe the former behavior was "local" -- I have a slight shred of a doubt only because, when things are working as you expect, you take the behavior for granted and don't pay attention to all of the details.

I'm 100% certain that I was seeing at least the next sibling when jumping to an item from the agenda. If I had been seeing the "ancestors" behavior all along, I would have asked this question years ago and set it explicitly.

So, again, somehow this morning, one minute I had good behavior, and literally five minutes later (no restart, no software update, no quit/relaunch Emacs), it was a different, inconvenient behavior. I don't understand how that could happen.

Thanks for the tip, though. The behavior now is much better.

hjh