Re: Finding old appointments

[Tassilo Horn <tassilo@member.fsf.org>]

Matt Lundin <mdl@imapmail.org> writes:

>> Well, basically I'm just looking for a search facility that shows me
>> an agenda view with all entries that contain only timestamps before
>> today and no pending todos, so that I can use the agenda commands to
>> act on them.  Some will be deleted, others archived.
>
> Here's an example of an agenda view that would bring up all old,
> active timestamps marked DONE:
>
> C-c a m [RET] TIMESTAMP<"<today>"+TODO="DONE"

Oh, nice.  I've never use this search, but it is very useful.  Simply by
searching for a timestamp before today does already help me.

Additionally, playing around with it helped me being even more
specific.  So what I want to get is an agenda with

  - headlines that contain only past timestamps and are closed TODOs (if
    they are TODOs), that is, any TODO state after the | in
    `org-todo-keywords'

  - the same applies to all children of that entry, recursively

  - the agenda should only list the top-most entries for which these
    properties hold

Example:

* Project X
** TODO foo
   SCHEDULED: <2010-06-22 Tue>
** Bla bla bla
*** DONE baz
    DEADLINE: <2010-06-01 Tue>
*** Meeting with Hugo
    <2010-06-04 Fri>

So in that case, the search should list only the "Bla bla bla" entry,
because it's the top-most entry where all children are past and done.
The "TODO foo" is not recognized, because although its timestamp is in
the past, it has an open TODO state.  (And because of that, the parent
of both entries "Project X" doesn't match the search criteria.)

> (If I understand the question correctly...) The variable
> org-stuck-projects (see the docstring) can be tweaked to identify
> subtrees that match your criteria.

Although I don't use the stuck projects functionality right now, I don't
want to abuse it for something different.

> A custom skip function might also be useful here. 
>
> (info "(org) Special agenda views")

Thanks, I'll read that up.

Bye,
Tassilo