From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Tim X Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.help Subject: Re: planner or org or ... Date: Sat, 26 May 2007 19:14:41 +1000 Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com Message-ID: <87tzu03q0u.fsf@lion.rapttech.com.au> References: NNTP-Posting-Host: lo.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Trace: sea.gmane.org 1180172510 13803 80.91.229.12 (26 May 2007 09:41:50 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@sea.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Sat, 26 May 2007 09:41:50 +0000 (UTC) To: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org Original-X-From: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Sat May 26 11:41:49 2007 Return-path: Envelope-to: geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([199.232.76.165]) by lo.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.50) id 1HrsmS-0008F8-Dv for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Sat, 26 May 2007 11:41:48 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1] helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1HrsmR-0004B5-OX for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Sat, 26 May 2007 05:41:47 -0400 Original-Path: shelby.stanford.edu!newsfeed.stanford.edu!newsfeed.berkeley.edu!ucberkeley!news-hog.berkeley.edu!tethys.csu.net!newshub.sdsu.edu!news.astraweb.com!border1.newsrouter.astraweb.com!sn-xt-sjc-05!sn-xt-sjc-08!sn-post-sjc-01!supernews.com!corp.supernews.com!not-for-mail Original-Newsgroups: gnu.emacs.help User-Agent: Gnus/5.11 (Gnus v5.11) Emacs/22.1.50 (gnu/linux) Cancel-Lock: sha1:mawbyO6JMM+vR247FlT4vQW2dSE= Original-X-Complaints-To: abuse@supernews.com Original-Lines: 94 Original-Xref: shelby.stanford.edu gnu.emacs.help:148860 X-BeenThere: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Users list for the GNU Emacs text editor List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Original-Sender: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Errors-To: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.help:44449 Archived-At: "Rustom Mody" writes: > Not intended to be a troll... but I am one of those types who cannot make a > decision when theres too much to choose from. > > So my question is should whats pros and cons of planner and org modes? > They both have their pros and cons IMO. I have been using planner mode for about 12 months and find it really convenient for tracking information related to various projects and having a daily page showing scheduled tasks, notes on what occured that day and keepiing a time log of time spent on each task etc. Its ability to keep embedded links to items relating to a project, such as e-mails, contact info stored in BBDB, relevant web sites etc, is very convenient. The day pages are a good way of keeping a daily record/diary of events. You can have these linked to project pages as well. So, if you want a project overview, you look at the project page. In my case, I'm using the time reportinig summary, so I can see how much time has been spent on the project in total and the tasks that breaks down to. All the notes and tasks associated with the project are all there as well. If I want to see what I did on a particular day, I can view the day page, which has a breakdown of the time I spent on each task, what diary appointments I had, any notes or summary of activity I've added and what tasks were completed that day. Critics of planner mode tend to feel its too complicated and can be too fragile because everything is kept in different files and changes made outside of planner mode can screw up all the links. While I find a certain amount of truth in that, I find the power and convenience it gives you is worth the complexity and as long as you do things through the provided functions, it seems quite stable. There are a lot of advanced parts to planner mode which I have either not needed or just not liked, so I don't use them. I've used org mode for organising thoughts on a particular project and keeping notes etc. I'm not using the full power of Org mode, but do find it convenient for planning and organising thoughts. I like the fact that you can have .org files anywhere, where planner requires all the files to be in one directory (though I think there is some level of customization available in this respect). > I also need a something to record a diary. Some earlier postings on this list > recommended records-mode http://sourceforge.net/projects/records but it seems > to be broken > > $ make > Makefile:370: warning: overriding commands for target `clean-lisp' > Makefile:367: warning: ignoring old commands for target `clean-lisp' > make: *** No rule to make target `recordsadmin.in', needed by `recordsadmin'. > Stop. > >>From memory, isn't there some setup script your supposed to run before trying to build the software? Did you do that? I stopped usinig records mode once I started using planner. There were some aspects of records mode I liked, but other things were a pain. I completely lost my TODO list on several occasions, which was a real pain. I suspect it was because of something I did incorrectly, but I think good software should actually protect the stupid from themselves - if I was doing something stupid, it should make it harder for me to lose important data or at least warn me I ran that risk. I guess the best thing to do is try them both out. Try to avoid heavy customization until after you have been using the system for a while (particularly relevant for planner mode). I found it took me a couple of goes before I got my setup correct. In the end, I found that having an OfficeGeneral project, TaskPool, and a project file for each of the projects I'm working on was the best setup for me. Put tasks in the project files and only schedule them when you are ready to start working on them rather than creating lots of tasks and scheduling all of them. One thing which provides additional support for org mode is that it is being bundled with emacs 22. This means it is more likely going to be supported and you don't need to install additional packages to use it. This does not imply that planner mode is not going to be supported - I think it has a big enough user community for it to continue for some time, but you do have to install additional software to use it. I also find muse mode very useful and planner mode is based on muse mode. Using both, its very easy to generate web pages of your day or project pages and while I've not done it, you can probably use other muse publishing modes to generate latex, ps, pdf, texinfo and other formats. HTH Tim -- tcross (at) rapttech dot com dot au