At Sat, 20 Jun 2009 12:48:23 -0700,
Ross A Laird wrote:
> 
> 
> One of the interesting things about org, from a non-programmer's point
> of view, is that there are dozens (hundreds?) of settings that seem to
> require some sort of programming knowledge. This is both challenging and
> useful, from an educational perspective. Here's an example:
> 
> org-tags-column
> 
> It is referred to in the documentation, but without an example. And it
> does not show up in a search of this list. So, how do I set this? I have
> tried:
> 
> (setq org-tags-column 100)
> 
> in my emacs, but I have no idea if this is the correct way to do this
> (or even if it works, actually).
> 
> As I said, this is one of the interesting things about org; always more
> to discover and learn. Can someone give me a sense of how best to use
> the above setting?


I'm not a programmer either, so I find myself in much the same
situation. However, in this case I recently found a very useful
keystroke: C-h v

This prompts you for a variable name. Tell it the name you want (if
the cursor is on the variable it will suggest it by default) and a
buffer will pop up explaining the variable.

In this case, we're told

,----
| org-tags-column is a variable defined in `org.el'.
| Its value is -77
| 
| Documentation:
| The column to which tags should be indented in a headline.
| If this number is positive, it specifies the column.  If it is negative,
| it means that the tags should be flushright to that column.  For example,
| -80 works well for a normal 80 character screen.
| 
| You can customize this variable.
`----

This tells me what it's setr to currently, what it does and it tells
me I can set it in the customize interface. Given that it's just a
simple variable, I would assume you could change it in .emacs with a
setq.

Hope this helps!