Re: Easy entry of date ranges

[Eric Abrahamsen <eric@ericabrahamsen.net>]

Ken Mankoff <mankoff@gmail.com> writes:

> On 2015-08-26 at 15:04, Nicolas Goaziou <mail@nicolasgoaziou.fr> wrote:
>> Ken Mankoff <mankoff@gmail.com> writes:
>>
>>> Org and the calendar make it fairly easy to enter time ranges, by
>>> typing "--" and then the end time or "+" and then the duration. I'd
>>> like to do something similar for dates, but it doesn't seem to be
>>> supported. Is there an easy way to enter a date range for a scheduled
>>> task?
>>
>> I don't think so. However, in Org, scheduling a task to date A means
>> it can start from date A. Scheduling a task to "date A -- date B"
>> would be equivalent to scheduling it to date A.
>>
>> You probably want to do scheduled + deadline, which is supported.
>
> No, scheduled + deadline is a different use case. The syntax I use,
> =SCHEDULED: <2020-01-01>--<2020-01-07>=, is valid, there just isn't an
> easy way to enter it. One (of many) use cases: a week long vacation.
> This use case is supported by Org since the Agenda helpfully shows
> "(1/7)", and "(2/7)", etc. before each entry. Everything else is so
> efficient and has shortcuts, including time ranges, I just hoped I was
> missing something here. Perhaps it hasn't been implemented yet.

I think what Nicolas means is that, in the sort of use case you're
outlining above, you should probably be using a plain timestamp.
SCHEDULED means "I'm going to work on this TODO now", in which case a
time span doesn't quite make sense -- you start working at the start of
the span, and you finish when you toggle the keyword to DONE.

For a vacation, a plain timestamp is more appropriate. However! That
just begs the question of how to make it easier to enter a date range.
That's a question I don't know the answer to -- I suspect there isn't
any way but just hitting a couple of hyphens and then "C-c ." again. I
suppose Org could help by setting the default date of the end time to
something after the start time.

Eric