Re: Show parent PROJECTS for an item

[Manish <mailtomanish.sharma@gmail.com>]

  On Sat, May 16, 2009 at 8:41 PM, Carsten Dominik wrote:
  >
  > On May 15, 2009, at 11:33 PM, Marcelo de Moraes Serpa wrote:
  >
  >> Hello list,
  >>
  >> I'd like to do a little modification to the code that grabs the
  >> summary of items for the agenda view. For each item that has a
  >> parent with a PROJECT type, I'd like org to render this parent in
  >> a hierarchical, tree way, like this:.
  >>
  >> Let's say I search for a specific item using a regexp. This item
  >> has three parents, which all are PROJECTS, it would show like
  >> this:
  >>
  >>
  >> PROJECT My project
  >>  PROJECT My sub-project
  >>    PROJECT My sub-sub-project
  >>      NEXT Call Liz to check if the account has been created
  >> :@call:@work:
  >>
  >> So, searched for Liz and got this specific item, but org then
  >> would give me more context, showing me to which project it
  >> belongs to. Not sure if it's already possible, but if not, would
  >> be a great addition to support the GTD system, IMO :)
  >
  > The purpose of the flat agenda list is to be compact, and what you
  > want would defeat that purpose.
  >
  > If you are working with a single file, a sparse tree might be the
  > best alternative. If not, you could give follow mode in the agenda
  > a try.
  >

Follow mode is fit for the purpose when you are _in_ Emacs but when
you want to print and take your lists along then missing context can
be confusing.  Would it be possible to encode the task hierarchy into
the task display like so:

,----[ sample tree ]
| * PROJECT Take over the world
| ** SUBPROJ Make a plan
| *** TODO Print a trillion dollars
`----

,----[ sample todo list ]
|    TODO Take over the world/Make a plan/Print a trillion dollars
| or TODO Print a trillion dollars [Take over the world/Make a plan]
| or [Take over the world/Make a plan] TODO Print a trillion dollars
| or TODO [Take over the world/Make a plan] Print a trillion dollars
| or TODO Print a trillion dollars\Make a plan\Take over the world
`----

Personally I prefer the last one most.  The number of characters added
from each node, and/or the numbers of nodes added and/or the total
length of todo item in agenda can be made configurable to limit the
length of the agenda lines.

At present, some of us try to be more descriptive when defining a task
so as to identify the context from the task alone.  If this is
implemented, we can try to be succinct instead.

Of course, I do not know elisp nor do I understand Org internals so
the idea might just be nonsense from an implementation perspective.

Regards,
-- 
Manish