Re: property searches for #+CATEGORY

[Bastien <bzg@altern.org>]

Hi Adam,

Adam Spiers <orgmode@adamspiers.org> writes:

> Again, at risk of being pedantic I would describe my requirement
> slightly differently.  (N.B. I can already search through multiple
> files.)

Thanks for the very clear & interesting explanations.

> In fact, the only thing missing is that the code for doing a
> property-based tag search doesn't honour #+CATEGORY, only CATEGORY
> properties.

Right.  Now I understand it would be consistent to include #+CATEGORY in
the category *search*.  I was mainly choking on what Carsten mentionned
in his reply about whether org-entry-get should return the category as
defined by #+CATEGORY -- I guess this is the only consistency-hole.

But since where are speaking about search interface, this is not a
problem, that's right.

> Firstly categories present the user with another interface to learn
> about.  I am certainly not complaining, but you cannot discount the
> extra complexity they introduce, and therefore we should be careful
> about introducing yet more complexity.  

I didn't want to add complexity, but rather expressivity.

My line of reasoning was this one:

1. it is not recommended to use #+CATEGORY twice in a file

2. then the main use of #+CATEGORY will be for grouping *files*

3. if we use #+CATEGORY for grouping files (or tasks across files) and
   :CATEGORY: for grouping tasks, let's separate these two mechanismes
   more clearly

4. this would spare us the cost of deciding what value `org-entry-get'
   should return when asked for the category, in case a file uses both
   #+CATEGORY and :CATEGORY:...

But again, this line depends on how fussy we are about (4) and search
considerations ask for flexibility -- not fussiness :)

>> And besides these search considerations, I really believe that
>> having several groups of agenda-files would help.
>
> Quite possibly, though probably not for me :-) Can you suggest a use
> case or two?

It's mainly for publishing: for now I have to put each project in each
directory so that `org-publish-project-alist' DTRT.  I'd rather publish
groups of files, thus being able to quickly decide what file is in what
group.

> Argh, way too much time spent on this list today ;-)

:)

-- 
Bastien