Re: Use case of TIMESTAMP, SCHEDULED and DEADLINE

[Christian Egli <christian.egli@novell.com>]

Hi Carsten

On Tue, 2006-04-11 at 12:30 +0200, Carsten Dominik wrote:
> On Apr 10, 2006, at 13:21, Christian Egli wrote:
> >
> >      1. What is the use case of TIMESTAMP?
> 
> The *intended* difference (which may have nothing to do with
> the way things are being used...) is the following:

Thanks, that makes it much more clear.

> >      2. I would like tasks that are scheduled to no longer show up as
> >         "CURRENTLY OPEN TODO ITEMS". For me open items are items that
> >         have not been scheduled yet and that I need to schedule.
> 
> Hmmm, yes, I can see how this would be useful, but this is
> not how it works now.  I'll put this on my list to think about.

I'll see if I can hack on this.

> >      3. The sorting of items within a day is a mystery to me. I would
> >         like to sort them by state (TODO, DONE) and priority. Sorting 
> > by
> >         priority seems to work for the CURRENTLY OPEN TODO ITEMS but 
> > not
> >         for a specific day. I modified the to '(time-up priority-down),
> >         but it still sorts by category for the days. I tried to debug
> >         this but did not find my way around the code
> >         ((org-finalize-agenda-entries).
> 
> OK, let me explain sorting, maybe this will make things clearer.

Yes, thanks this helps a lot.

>     Here is some information about priorities, which is not yet
>     documented.
> 
>     A TODO entry has priority 1.
> 
>     Timestamps and ranges, and diary entries have priority 0.
> 
>     A deadline has priority 100 on the day it is due.  On days before
>     becoming due the deadline has priority 10-(days to due-date)
> 
>     A scheduled item has priority 99 on the day it is due.  So it is
>     going to be high in the list, but still below deadlines due today.
> 
>     Explicitly specified priorities #A, #B, and #C add a value
>     of 2000, 1000, 0, respectively.  Items without explicit priority
>     are treated as being #B.
> 
>     So a TODO entry normally has priority 1001.

OK, understood.

>     In the agenda you can check the priority of an item with the "P" key,
>     by the priority is not updated when you change the date or TODO state
>     of an item.  Refresh the agenda with "r" to make sure the correct
>     priorities are listed for "P".

This is interesting. Still using CVS Emacs (and org mode), "P" tells me
1001 for "OPEN TODO ITEMS" (2001 for #A, 1 for #C). However scheduled
TODOs which show up on a certain day all have priority -1000 regardless
of their explicitly set priorities. Is this intended?

> If you want to get the TODO entries taken apart by keyword, I guess
> I would have to assign different priorities for different TODO
> keywords.  Or make a special TODO sorting key that could be added
> to `org-agenda-sorting-strategy'.

I'll look into this.

-- 
Christian Egli, Senior Consultant
Novell (Schweiz) AG, Leutschenbachstrasse 41, 8050 Zürich
Tel. +41 43 299 75 46 direct, Tel. +41 43 299 78 00, Fax: +41 43 299 75 01