You don't need those temporary marks I think. Just store the positions in a
variable or use overlays or text properties. You could even make a speed
key to run the mark command.

It could be implemented from a helm command pretty easily too. You can
easily make multiple selections with helm.

Point 3 is a tough one. You might provide a numeric prefix arg that makes
all levels the same. That may be easier to manually adjust.


On Sat, Apr 1, 2017 at 1:28 PM Bob Newell <bobnewell@bobnewell.net> wrote:

> Org-mode has nearly everything that other outlining tools have, and
> generally much, much more. But one thing that is missing (and
> there's been sporadic traffic about this) is convenient
> scatter-gather. BrainStorm WFO has this; it's not like I'm going to
> start using it as an alternative, but such a feature might be nice in
> org-mode.
>
> The Emacs way is to write it yourself, and I'm thinking about that. But
> I wanted to try out the concept and see if it's of interest, or for that
> matter, more trouble than it's worth.
>
> You can do something like this on the Agenda screen, but that's not a
> general solution at all. What about an "ordinary" org mode file. So
> here's the flow I envision.
>
> 1. You "mark" a series of headline entries with, say,
>    'org-sg-mark'. Perhaps it would look like this when marked:
>
>    ** ! interesting headline
>
>    Yes, this disturbs the existing text. But the marking has to be
>    somehow visual.
>
> 2. You give a command like 'org-sg-gather' and the marked headlines are
>    gathered up, moved (just like archiving) to a file (for which you're
>    prompted) or maybe, optionally to the top or bottom of the current
>    buffer. The marks are then cleared.
>
> 3. 'org-sg-clear' clears a single mark; 'org-sg-clear-all' clears them all.
>
> Potential problems:
>
> 1. As mentioned, text is disturbed at least temporarily.
>
> 2. Incomplete operation sequences leave marks in place, when they might
>    be useless.
>
> 3. If the gathered headlines are at different levels, the resulting
>    gathered outline will not be sensible and will require manual fixing.
>
> Comments welcome. This doesn't look especially difficult to code, but
> does it make sense and is it of any use?
>
> --
> Bob Newell
> Honolulu, Hawai`i
> * Via Gnus/BBDB/Org/Emacs/Linux *
>
> --
John

-----------------------------------
Professor John Kitchin
Doherty Hall A207F
Department of Chemical Engineering
Carnegie Mellon University
Pittsburgh, PA 15213
412-268-7803
@johnkitchin
http://kitchingroup.cheme.cmu.edu